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UK adults spent an average of three hours and 47 minutes online every day during the pandemic, an annual survey of media habits by regulator Ofcom has found.
That was over an hour longer than adults in Germany, France and Spain.
In addition, online shopping sales in the UK rose by 48% to £113bn, with food and drink sales rising the most.
Ofcom said the Online Nation 2021 report revealed how the pandemic had accelerated a shift to online.
In a year when many had to find what entertainment they could at home, gaming saw a big increase with half who played telling Ofcom it helped them get through lockdown.
In what it says is a snapshot of an unprecedented year when communication, entertainment, culture, retail, work and education moved more online, research from O.
New study reveals the data of a year lived online for the UK techuk.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from techuk.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Social video sites and apps are now used by almost all UK adult internet users (97 per cent), and by 92 per cent of three to four-year-olds.
Young adults are particularly heavy users of social video platforms, with 18-24s spending an average of one hour 16 minutes per day on YouTube in September 2020 – an increase of 11 minutes since 2019.
TikTok in particular experienced huge growth during the pandemic, Ofcom found, from 3.5 million UK adult visitors in September 2019 to 14 million by March 2021.
TikTok also saw the biggest increase in daily use among young adults, with 18-24s more than doubling their time spent on it in the year to September 2020, up from 17 minutes to 38 minutes.
Half of UK adults watched porn during Covid pandemic, according to Ofcom
Britons spent nearly £2.45billion on and in mobile apps across last year
26 million people visited an adult website or app in September 2020 (Image: Getty)
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UK adults spent more time online than other large European countries such as France and Germany during the pandemic, according to Ofcom research.