Ofcom reveals how UK men and women behave differently online

Now, you could be forgiven for making a sweeping generalisation and leaping to the immediate conclusion that this is about porn. I certainly did. And it is.

Men are twice as likely to visit a pornographic service online than women, Ofcom notes, in its annual Online Nation report looking at the UK's digital habits. 10 million men – or 43%; the statistics refer to online adults, incidentally – did just that in May this year, compared with 16% (3.8 million) of women. In that same month, male visitors spent an average of 1 hour 44 minutes on porn sites, compared with around an hour for female visitors.

The regulator did not pass comment on why that might be. Maybe men just have more time on their hands. Or something.

With that out of the way, there are some noteworthy statistics in the Ofcom report that are not linked to adult content. Or not overtly so, at least.

Men, it seems, are much more into GenAI than women are.

Ofcom commissioned a survey, carried out in June, to understand how UK internet users view and use generative AI. The study showed that overall 41% of UK internet users aged 16-plus said they had used a generative AI tool in the past year, with 18% saying they had done so in the past month.

Usage was heavily skewed towards men, with 50% having used a GenAI tool in the preceding year, compared with 33% of women. Top use cases were to find information or content – of an unspecified nature – while generally exploring the technology and creating images or videos ranked fairly highly too. It's anyone's guess how far we have actually moved away from the adult content topic here.

ChatGPT is, unsurprisingly, the most used GenAI tool in the UK. Ofcom's survey showed that 33% of UK users aged 16 or over had used it in the past year, while other less well-established tools topped out at 15% or lower, led by Microsoft's Copilot and Snapchat my AI (see chart below). Google's Gemini is also noteworthy, as Ofcom points out, as it was launched as recently as December 2023 and six months later had risen to fourth spot in the ranking.

When it comes to the biggest social media sites and apps, men's and women's behaviour really differs. Women account for the majority of time spent on Pinterest (79%), Snapchat (66%), Instagram (64%), TikTok (62%) and Facebook (61%), while men account for the bulk of time spent on Quora (70%), X (63%), Reddit (61%), LinkedIn (60%) and YouTube (56%).

Reddit was the fastest-growing big social media platform in the UK over the course of the year. It's adult users increased by 47% to 22.9 million by May, meaning it overtook X and LinkedIn to become the fifth most used social media service among UK adults.

Elsewhere on the Internet, women are more likely than men to visit health and wellbeing sites, with 88% doing so versus 80% of men. And while the split was pretty even in terms of visiting news sites – women were ahead by a couple of percentage points at 51% – the amount of time spent there differed. Men averaged four hours and 49 minutes on the top ten news services – the BBC, The Sun, and the Mail Online lead the way – in May 2024, while women clocked up just three hours and 28 minutes.

Nonetheless, overall women actually spend longer per day online, be it on a smartphone, tablet or computer. On average women are online for 33 minutes longer than men at four hours and 36 minutes, as of May. Women aged 18-24 managed an average of six hours and 36 minutes per day, or more than an hour longer than their male counterparts.

So perhaps men don't have more time on their hands after all. It's just that whatever they are doing online, they're doing it quickly.

Plus ça change, you might say.