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Canadians Online 1 hr a day
Source: Canadian Press

More than half of Canada’s residents are regular Internet users and spend an average of about an hour online a day, according to a new report.

Research by comScore Networks puts the worldwide Internet population at about 694.2 million after following Internet traffic in March and counting users aged 15 or older.

It’s estimated there were about 18.9 million Canadian residents online, making Canada the eighth biggest user of the Internet worldwide.

The report says that on average, Canadians used the Internet for about 38.4 hours online a month, which is above the worldwide average of 31.31 hours, and ranked 10th in the world.

Internet users in Israel spent the most time online a month, logging an average of 57.5 hours.

It’s estimated that about 14 per cent of the world’s population aged 15 and older is online.

The United States had the most Internet users with about 152 million, more than double China’s 74.7 million users.

Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, South Korea and France were the other countries in front of Canada on the list, which was ahead of Italy, India, Brazil and Spain.

While the Internet was once dominated by American content and users, the report notes Asian countries — China, Japan, India and Korea in particular — now account for 25 per cent of Internet users and outnumber American web surfers by about 16 million.

“The online audience in the U.S. represents less than a quarter of Internet users across the globe, versus 10 years ago when it accounted for two-thirds of the global audience,” said comScore president Peter Daboll in a release.

“This is a sea of change of enormous proportion.”