London, Aug 9 (IANS) With a growing number of women buying clothes online and 72 percent of all adults buying goods or services online, the Internet appears to have overwhelmed the Britons in a major way. A government data has found about two-third of the British population vusing Internet everyday.
According to the country’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), Britain now has 36 million adults, or 73 percent of the total population, using the Internet everyday. This is an increase of 20 million over 2006 when the country started keeping such records.
Also, the latest figures show that 21 million households, 83 percent of the total, have Internet access in Britain, in 2013. “The Internet has changed the way people go about their daily lives,” said the ONS.
Almost three quarters of the adults in Britain use the Internet everyday in 2013, with six out of every ten adults, or 61 percent, using a mobile phone or portable computer to access the Internet “on the go”, according to the ONS.
Meanwhile, the statistics also found that four million households in Britain, 17 percent, still have no access to the Internet.
For purposes of using Internet, more than half of all adults, 55 percent of the total, used the Internet to read or download the news, newspapers or magazines in 2013, compared to only 20 percent of adults in 2007 as physical newspaper readership is reportedly dropped.
On social networking sites, the ONS said: “Social networking has been one of the major success stories of the Internet age and its use continues to grow.” In 2013, over half, or 53 percent, of all adults participated in social networking, up from 48 percent in 2012.
It also said that the importance of the social networks use was not solely confined to the youth. “There has been significant growth, in the last six years, in adults selling goods or services online.”
The official data indicated that 72 percent of all adults bought goods or services online in 2013, up from 53 percent in 2008.
Half of the British women bought clothes online, compared with 45 percent of men, the ONS found.
