Americans say they are spending more time on Internet

U.S. adults said they are spending more time on the Internet – nearly 8 percent of their week this year, according to a recent survey.

The Harris Poll reported that Americans 18 and older spent an average of 13 hours a week online, excluding time spent checking e-mail. That’s an hour a week less than in October 2008, during the election campaign and burgeoning financial crisis – but nearly double the time spent online a decade ago.

In 1999, Americans said they spent an average of seven hours a week online. That increased to between eight and nine hours through 2006 and then grew to 11 hours a week in 2007.

Harris said the increase in the past two years was “striking,” and partly reflected growth in TV watched on the Internet and online shopping. Half the people surveyed said they had shopped over the Internet in the last month.

People ages 25 to 49 spent the most amount of time on the Internet (17 to 18 hours a week), whether at home, work or another location. Americans who were 65 and older spent only eight hours a week online, on average.

Nearly a quarter of people aged 25 to 29 said they spent between 24 and 168 hours online per week.

This year, 80 percent of people surveyed said they browsed the Internet, up from 56 percent in 1999.

The survey asked people only if they went online from a computer, not from a smart phone.

The Harris Poll surveyed 2,029 U.S. adults from July 7 to July 12 and Oct. 13 to Oct. 18. The sampling error is plus or minus 2 percentage points.