Women spend more time online than men - but are more worried about online harms

New data from the communications regulator Ofcom has shown that women spend more time online than men but are more concerned about the potential harms of being online

New data from Ofcom reveals that women are spending more time online than men, but are also more worried about the potential harms of the internet.

The communications regulator's latest Online Nation report shows that across all adult groups and devices, women are online for 33 minutes longer each day than men, a figure that rises to over an hour among 18 to 24-year-olds.

Despite this, the study found that women were more likely than men to express concern about issues such as online extremism, human trafficking, suicide, and offensive content. Among teenagers, girls and young women were more worried than boys about sexual or pornographic content, online misogyny, and violent content.

The research showed that men were more likely to have encountered online harms like misinformation, scams, fraud, and hateful content, while women and girls were more likely to come across content promoting unhealthy eating or exercise habits and posts related to body image. The study also highlighted other gendered online habits, with men more likely to use generative AI tools or visit pornography websites, and women more likely to visit health and wellbeing sites.

In other findings, the study revealed that Reddit has overtaken X, formerly Twitter, in the list of most popular social media apps. According to the time spent daily on a platform during a single month – May this year – Ofcom revealed that YouTube took the top spot as the most popular platform, followed by Facebook and its linked Messenger app. Instagram, TikTok and Reddit rounded off the top five, with X now sitting in sixth place.