The average person in the UK spends more than a day a week online, according to a landmark report on the impact of the “decade of the smartphone”.
People are on average online for 24 hours a week, twice as long as 10 years ago, with one in five of all adults spending as much as 40 hours a week on the web.
This is partly due to the rise in use by those aged 16 to 24, who average 34.3 hours a week on the internet. And for the first time, women are spending more time online than men, fuelled by a rise in internet use by those aged 18 to 34 and the explosion in social media.
They spend half an hour a week longer online than men of the same age.
Ofcom, which compiled the report, attributes a large part of the surge in time online to the rise of smartphones, which are now used by 78% of the population, compared with just 17% in 2008, the year after the first iPhone was launched.
Britons are now so addicted to them that they check them every 12 minutes.
The report, A decade of Digital Dependency, says 40% of adults look at their phone within five minutes of waking up, rising to 65% of those aged under 35.
And 37% of adults check their phones just before switching off the lights for bed, increasing to 60% of under 35s.
The younger generation is the most addicted.
Those aged 15 to 24 on average spend four hours a day on the phone, compared with two hours and 49 minutes for all adults.
The young also check their phones every 8.6 minutes, more frequently than any other age group.
While Ofcom highlights benefits such as keeping in touch with family, it cites stress and disruption to personal and family life.
“Some find themselves feeling overloaded when online or frustrated when they are not,” director of market intelligence Ian MacRae said.
Fifteen per cent said smartphones made them feel they were always at work, 54% admitted they interrupted face-to-face conversations with friends and family, and 43% admitted spending too much time online.
More than a third felt stressed and “cut off” without their phone and 29% “lost without it” – while one in 10 said giving it up was “liberating” or made them more productive.
But people treasure their smart phone more than any other device.
Almost half of adults said they would miss it more than TV (28%) and a desktop or laptop computer (10%) – a reversal of a decade ago, when 52% said the TV was more important than the mobile phone (13%).
Among 16 to 24-year-olds, 72% now say the smartphone is the device they would miss most.
We spend less time making phone calls on it than ever before.
Total outgoing calls on mobiles dropped by 2.5 billion minutes (1.7%) in 2017 as people turned to WhatsApp and Messenger.
Using it for phone calls is only considered important by 75% of smartphone users compared to 92% who say browsing the web is more important.
It has, however, provoked a huge divide at mealtime, where talking on the phone was deemed inappropriate by 72% of 18-34s as against 90% of those aged over 55. © Telegraph Media Group Limited