Divides in online behaviour between women and men, Ofcom says

Ofcom said that the average woman in the UK spent four hours and 36 minutes online a day, compared with four hours and three minutes for men.

Among 18 to 24-year-olds, women spent six hours and 36 minutes online a day on average, compared to five hours and 28 minutes for men.

Looking at the top 10 social media websites and apps, women account for the majority of time spent on Pinterest ( 79%), Snapchat ( 66%), Instagram ( 64%), TikTok ( 62%) and Facebook ( 61%).

Men, on the other hand, account for the majority of time spent on Quora ( 70%), X ( 63%), Reddit ( 61%), LinkedIn ( 60%) and YouTube ( 56%).

Ofcom also said that women were marginally more likely than men to feel they have a good balance between their screen-time and real-world activities ( 69% vs 66%).

However, women were also more sceptical about the internet’s personal and societal value, and were less likely than men to think that the benefits of the online world outweigh the risks ( 65% vs 70%) and less likely to believe that the internet is a good thing for society ( 34% vs 47%). 

Ofcom said that the research also showed that women and teenage girls are more concerned about online harms, in particular material showing extremism ( 87% vs 77%), human trafficking ( 86% vs 76%), suicide ( 86% vs 77%), female genital mutilation ( 85% vs 74%) and hateful or offensive content ( 83% vs 67%).

For actual experience of online harms, men are more likely to encounter misinformation ( 41% vs 37%), scams or fraud ( 36% vs 31%) and hateful content ( 27% vs 24%), while women are more likely to experience unwelcome friend or follow requests ( 30% vs 26%), misogynistic content ( 23% vs 19%) and body image related content ( 21% vs 13%). 

Reddit has overtaken X as the fifth most popular social media platform in the UK, Ofcom added.

Outside of social media, men are more likely than women to have used a generative AI tool in the past year ( 50% vs 33%), while men are significantly more likely than women to visit online dating sites ( 65% vs 35%).

Women are more likely to visit health and wellbeing sites than men ( 88% vs 80%).