eMarketer: Social Networking Dominates Canadians’ Web Use

One-quarter of online time each day devoted to social sites

July 3, 2013 – Internet users in Canada are married to the social web, according to research from GlobalWebIndex.

The Q4 2012 survey of online activities worldwide found that, in Canada, 25% of total internet time was spent social networking. That adds up to nearly one and a half hours per day on social sites. The next-closest activity in terms of time spent was online news, which garnered just 13% of total online time, or about 38 minutes per day.

Average time spent online per day according to Internet users in Caanda (Q4 2012)

Microblogging and blogging, social activities that are somewhat related to social networking, took a further 15% of online time in aggregate, further pointing up the importance of social media to consumers in Canada.

eMarketer estimates that 17.7 million people in Canada will use social networking sites at least monthly this year, or 51.2% of the total population. Social network user growth is in the single digits, with 18.5 million people expected to use the sites in 2014. Facebook, as it is in most countries, is the most popular social network in Canada, claiming 93.9% of all social network users this year, eMarketer estimates.

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SOURCE: eMarketer