The world is losing interest in the Internet: the concentration of world horror

DataReportal, a company that specializes in researching the digital behavior of people around the world, has compiled the October 2022 Global Statistical Report.

It follows that from October 2021 to October 2022, the number of new users increased by 171 million people, bringing the total to 5.07 billion people (or 63.5% of all people on the planet). But, despite this, right now there has been a clear trend towards a decrease in interest in this resource in general, as well as the time of using the Web, in particular.

The proof of this is the very 171 million new users who came to the network over the past year. The fact is that this number shows a drop in growth by 23% compared to last year’s figure.

And it’s not just the growth in the number of new users that’s slowing down. A study by internet audience research company GWI (GlobalWebIndex) shows that the average amount of time people spend online each day has also been declining in recent months.

The company’s bottom line data shows that the typical working-age internet user now spends 6 hours 37 minutes a day, down 20 minutes a day from last year.

GWI used survey data from 48 countries around the world. Naturally, not every one of them recorded a drop in interest. For example, “there are still eight countries where the typical Internet user spends more than half of his waking time online,” DataReportal analysts write. Thus, more than the normalized working day – 10 or more hours a day – is spent on the Internet resources by the “average” resident of South Africa. Internet users in Brazil, the Philippines, Colombia and Argentina spend on average more than 9 hours a day on the Internet, while their peers in Malaysia, Thailand and Mexico claim that they use the Internet more than 8 hours a day.

In the light of these data, the same Japanese, for whom the use of devices connected to the Internet is reduced to only 3 hours and 46 minutes, could be called unique, the most resistant to “digital slavery” representatives of the globe.

Even hard-working Chinese and Koreans, who spend 5 hours 12 minutes and 5 hours 16 minutes a day, respectively, cannot keep up with them.

Of course, there are four exceptions in the list of countries – these are all the same South Africa, the Czech Republic, Ireland and Romania, whose residents over the past 12 months, on the contrary, have begun to surf the Internet more compared to last year.

Russia in the general list is in 9th place. The average Russian spends 7 hours 48 hours a day using the web.

Analyst data shows that the decline in interest in networks has occurred in all age groups. But the sharpest drop was found among female users aged 55 to 64. In the second quarter of 2022, on average, they spent a whopping 26 minutes less online than in the previous quarter, a 7.5 percent drop in just 3 months, according to the survey results.

GWI Trends Manager Tom Morris cites two reasons why people are cutting back on the amount of time they use the internet. Firstly, they are fed up with online communication during the quarantine due to COVID-19, and secondly, an era of more pragmatic use of the network is coming.

“We think the world has actually reached saturation point for time spent online,” says Morris. – In recent months, the average daily time spent by users has actually decreased globally, across all generations, and even in growing internet markets such as the Middle East and Latin America. We believe this is mainly the result of a growing distrust of the news and an increase in anxiety caused by social media, especially as social media accounts for an increasing proportion of total time spent online.”

Help “MK”. Data from the British analytical group Kepios (it does analytics for DataReportal) for Russia.

As of January 2022, there were 129.8 million Internet users in Russia. They were divided as follows: women – 53.6%, men – 46.4%. All of them make up 89% of the total population.

Among all Russian users of the world “web” at the beginning of this year, there were 106 million users of social networks.

Commentary by psychologist, leading researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Medical Sciences Vadim GUSCHIN:

– The fact that humanity is beginning to reduce the time spent on the Internet is, in my opinion, quite logical. If earlier the news was mostly entertaining, which attracted the majority of users, now the Internet is filled with something threatening. Not without reason during such periods the number of suicides, various deviations grows. People can not stand the concentration of world horror. Therefore, most of them, figuratively speaking, hide from this horror under the covers.

– For what reasons do those who form the news agenda seek to thicken the negative?

– The media began to specialize in bad news, because you can’t get a lot of “likes” on good news. In addition, this is a way to “rock” people into emotional outbursts. Political scientists call it cognitive wars: keep the people in the range of “zrada” – “overcome” all the time, and you can do whatever you want with them. Fortunately, most of the inhabitants on our planet are mentally healthy, which is what makes them now disconnect from the concentration of negativity in social networks, in news releases – the psyche exposes a kind of protection.