Online friends can't replace real ones

Jul 24 2007 By Chris Tomlinson, Birmingham Post

Our old friend, 'a recent survey', has found that Britons spend more time online than they do eating and drinking.

Quite a revelation considering how much the nation likes to binge.

According to the survey, on average Brits spend 34 days a year online and only 21 days a year stuffing their faces.

Apparently we also spend 22 days a year socialising, in the old fashioned sense of the word, where other people have to be in a room with you for it to count.

Unlike online social networking, to which we now devote six days per year. More than half the 10,500 British broadband users surveyed had either a MySpace, Facebook or MSN Messenger accounts, which could account for the mere 11 days a year we spend on personal grooming, as no-one knows what you really look or smell like on these popular sites.

In fact, social networking has overtaken online shopping, banking and downloading music as the most popular online activity after surfing and emailing.

As you might have suspected more women (56 per cent of those surveyed) use social networking sites than men (46 per cent of those surveyed).

But you may be surprised that it is now young women not young men who make up the largest total online audience. Seems the internet is no longer just one big lads mag.

Incidentally, in this survey, 'young' means between 18-34 years old, but the good news for those of us outside that range, when social networking, no one really needs to know.

Perhaps that's why that more than one third of the old people surveyed engaged in online social networking too - 'old' being defined as between 50 and dead. This survey, undertaken by YouGov for price comparison site uSwitch.com, has highlighted a very British trend.

We in the UK have a higher ratio of broadband connected users than any other country, including the USA, and our love of online social networking outstrips them too.

The recent popularity of Facebook in the UK is the latest sign that we might be turning into a stay-at-home nation.

A reported 150,000 of our citizens are signing up to Facebook everyday!

But this statistic could be misleading, with many of us just joining to see what the fuss is all about, having been prompted to do so by those already hooked, and is no more than a load of viral nonsense.

The real meaning of the word 'friend' is somehow being confused with 'someone I once met' in an attempt to win some kind of online popularity contest. In fact, I have recently been invited to be a Facebook friend by someone, I had hoped, I would never hear from again.

I therefore suspect that real social networking, as I'm going to call it, is a long way from being replaced.

* Chris is head of digital at WAA (waa.co.uk). E-mail chris.tomlinson@waa.co.uk.