All About Content

The Pew Internet & American Life Project, which has been documenting the social impact of the Internet, released the results of a new survey last week. According to Pew, nearly one-third of American Internet users go online just for fun on a typical day rather than to check email, read news or use a search engine. That’s a sharp increase over the number who responded this way a year ago.

“Hanging out” is now the third most popular activity on the Net, after emailing and using search engines. (If email, catching up on news, and searching for stuff doesn’t count as “just for fun,” what does?)

Conversely, two-thirds of respondents said they’ve tried at one time surfing the Web just to pass the time — meaning that one-third (of Internet users!) have never used the Internet just for fun. Well, guess that’s just more bandwidth for the rest of us.