UK housewives love it, Chinese use it most, Danes are least keen

British housewives spend almost half of their free time online, far more than the average around the world, according to a study of internet behaviour.

The poll of more than 27,500 people in 16 countries found that housewives in the UK spend 47% of their leisure time on the web, compared with 39% for students and 32% for the unemployed. Globally, the average across all occupations was 29%.

Overall, the Chinese spend the largest part of their leisure time online - 44% compared with 28% for Britons, rising to 32% of those aged 18-24. Of the 16 nationalities surveyed, Scandinavians seemed the least inclined to while away their free time in front of the computer - Danes spent an average of 15% of their non-work hours on the net, with Swedes at 18% and Norwegians at 22%.



The poll, conducted by international market research firm TNS, also found that the UK is the least trusting of information in its newspapers - more respondents said they "highly trusted" Wikipedia as a credible source (24%) than newspapers (23%). But it could be worse for the traditional media - only 6% of people in the UK said they "highly trusted" private blogs. The UK's favoured news source was friends (45%), followed by online news (40%) - an apparent contradiction, considering that much online news originates from newspapers. In Germany, 52% of respondents said they "highly trusted" Wikipedia.

More than half (58%) said they had gone on to meet face-to-face with a contact first made on the internet, with 45% having had telephone conversations with friends they met online. Germans, meanwhile, were most likely to have met up with an online friend, at 76%. The figure for Chinese web users was the lowest, at 40%.

Virtual friendships also span the globe. UK respondents reported having friends from places as diverse as Azerbaijan, Nepal and Christmas Island. However, despite the nation's apparent ease with social networking, many people doubted the true identity of their online "friends". Thirty-seven per cent of all respondents admitted they could not be sure of an online friend's identity, though 57% of Germans strongly agreed with the statement "You can never be sure of an online friend's true identity".

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