Norton Online Living Report: scary stats for parents; social networking strong

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Saturday, 16 February 2008 15:39

Your IT - Home IT

As explained on the previous page, Symantec’s NOLR report provides details on Internet use in a number of areas, including communication, socialising, living, informing, buying, banking, exploring and protecting.

Taken directly from Symantec’s summary of key findings, here are the details.

Communicating:

- Australian adults are more confident about emailing than any other country in the world (96 percent)
- Email has usurped telephone as the major source of communication
- Most online adults (except in the U.S. and Japan) spend at least 1 hour per month sending text messages from their mobile phones
- Nearly 1 in 5 adults in the world spend time on their personal blog
- In China, nearly 87 percent of users have a personal blog, however in Australia only 17 percent have a blog

Socialising:

- 54 percent of Australian adults surveyed had made friends online. Of those users 65 percent have translated these online friendships to their offline world
- 40-60 percent of online adults globally prefer their online friendships the same amount or more than their offline friendships
- 47 percent of Australian adults and 54 percent of Australian children use social networking sites
- 10-25 percent of online adults globally feel comfortable socialising with strangers online. In Australia this figure jumps to 29 percent
- 30-40 percent of online children globally have made friends online.
- In Australia the results are slightly higher at 44 percent
- Approximately 88 percent of online children in China and 74 percent of online children in Brazil have made friends online

Living:

- Online gaming has become enormously popular, with 71 percent of online adults and 95 percent of online children in Australia playing games
- Globally, the numbers grow for online gaming for both children and adults with 94 percent of online adults and 99 percent of online children in China play online games
- 57 percent of online adults and 73 percent of online children users in Australia download music
- China and Brazil leads the world in downloading music (China has 97 percent adults and 98 percent children users, while Brazil has 88 percent adult and 89 percent children users)
- 62 percent of online adults in Australia and 50 percent of online children in Australia follow sports online
- 60 percent of online adult users in Australia and 75 percent of online children in Australia visit video sharing websites

Please read onto page 4.