Lost In Cyberspace: Brits Waste 3 Years Of Their Lives January 24, 2008

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A new AOL survey has just predicted that over half of UK surfers will spend up to 3 years of their lives lost in cyberspace, hopelessly surfing without finding what they are looking for.

That’s quite a claim but I feel like I’ve already spent that much time endlessly finding broken links and dodgy information.

The average surfer spends 4 hours online each day, with an hour of that wasted looking for things without any luck. That adds up to 15 days a year and around 3 years in total based on the average life span. Still, it’s still less time than we spend in queues – 4.5 years apparently.

A third of those surveyed blamed the fact that the Net has too much information for the confusion while almost half claimed surfing the Web was very frustrating.

"It's surprising that although Britons are increasingly net aware, we are still spending too much time tangled in the world wide web," said Michael Steckler, managing director of AOL UK. “Britons are able to take advantage of many new tools to surf smarter and spend less time lost in cyberspace. For example, Truveo is a free video search tool which scans the entire web for your desired videos - but only a fraction of internet users know this kind of service exists to help them. Internet searching should be a pleasure, not a chore.”

So, of your day, how much time do you waste lost in cyberspace? -Martin Lynch

[Tech.co.uk]