
Philippines tops world internet usage index with an average 10 hours a day - pseudolus
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/01/world-internet-usage-index-philippines-10-hours-a-day
======
mruts
I think there’s a fundamental difference between mobile vs computers. Using a
smartphone is almost always consumption. While using a desktop/laptop isn’t
necessarily production, it seems much more likely.

If I just had a smartphone and no computer growing up, I wouldn’t have learned
how to program. I think it’s vitally important to provide access to computers
and internet, not just the internet with smartphones.

I live in Tanzania and I teach at a school my wife founded and when teaching
my computer class I asked my students (15-19) what the internet was. And swear
to god, most of my students thought the internet _was_ Facebook. Others
thought it was Instagram, Google, or Facebook. They had no concept of a
website.

------
dannyr
This is mostly Facebook since it's zero-rated where most Filipino mobile users
are prepaid.

Young and old, rich and poor Filipinos are glued to their phones like zombies
all day browsing Facebook.

~~~
nedp
Filipino here. I blame carriers here for making Facebook free-of-charge. Yes,
good thing that Messenger let's us send messages for free. But the thing is,
we can't see images nor visit links unless you get a data pack/promo or
connect to a Wi-Fi.

Especially news, people can't see thumbnails or click links so they directly
jump to wrong assumptions based on what they see and hear from the comments.
Some people just lost the time to click articles as time goes by.

I wish they made the plan's cheaper but this is the Philippines where internet
sucks and PLDT (PH's largest internet provider) and Smart (PLDT's carrier) are
the worst.

~~~
bdibs
Can you really blame the carriers, at what point does personal responsibility
take over?

~~~
kartan
> at what point does personal responsibility take over?

Maybe a good approach can be:

\- When there are millions of people with otherwise functional lives falling
for unhealthy behaviour then you blame the carriers.

\- When there is a very small percentage of the population engaging in that
behaviour, then is personal responsibility.

For example, personal responsibility cannot be asked for when people lack
education.

~~~
ygkkojr6
It's incredible how condescending people here are. Since you see no value in
Facebook, those who use it a lot must be uneducated barbarians who are not
willing to spend their time on [thing you enjoy]

~~~
mruts
Economists talk about “revealed preference,” that is, people enjoy the things
that they do. But I don’t think that’s actually true. FB, like drugs, short-
circuits your brain and just because your reward system is hacked and you
spend all day doing it doesn’t mean you actually are getting real value from
it.

~~~
njarboe
Like people retired people who will spend all day and most of their disposable
income sitting in front of a slot machine pushing a button. I imagine that is
not what most of them wish they were doing with their lives.

------
Abishek_Muthian
Another impressive stat on Internet usage in PH is the sex ratio, Female
Internet users are equal (or more) to the male users[1]. In India female users
account for 30% overall & 64:36 (Male:Female) in rural India[2].

This is an important metric to note if one is running a non-geographically
bound dating platform; the female users from PH grew exponentially when
compared to other countries in our platform.

[1]:[https://news.abs-cbn.com/business/12/04/18/41-percent-of-
fil...](https://news.abs-cbn.com/business/12/04/18/41-percent-of-filipinos-
are-internet-users-sws-survey)

[2]:[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-
business/...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-
business/number-indian-internet-users-will-reach-500-million-by-
june-2018-iamai-says/articleshow/62998642.cms)

------
mmgutz
Data is cheaper than calls. I don't even bother with call or text plans when
I'm in the Phils. It costs a reasonable $8/mo to get 8GB of data if you use
the right refillable promos.

With that said, internet is so darn slow and unreliable it must be messaging
services. It's hard to get real work done from the Phils as a remote software
developer. Thank goodness for Tmux and SSH.

~~~
tfolbrecht
I have intermittent connectivity issues, and
[mosh]([https://mosh.org/](https://mosh.org/)) has been super helpful with
typing lag, reconnecting.

~~~
jjcm
+1 for mosh - life changing on spotty connections. I can tether in the back of
a car in rural side streets and still keep a ssh session going strong with no
disconnects on mosh. The mosh client is also available for chrome / chrome OS,
which as saved me a few times.

~~~
visarga
I'm using Eternal Terminal which also supports scrollback.

[https://mistertea.github.io/EternalTerminal/](https://mistertea.github.io/EternalTerminal/)

------
dirtylowprofile
I’m from Philippines and Facebook is huge here. Very huge and a bit of
concerning because telcos (which are a monopoly here) has free mobile data for
users and tons of fake news get reposted. Facebook has also been used as a
political tool here.

------
actionowl
Higest daily usage, and some of the lowest speeds[1]

Maybe they're on the internet for longer periods of time because the speeds
are so low and quality is so inconsistent that they _have_ to stay on the
internet longer to get anything done! Having lived in PH off-and-on for about
a year I know the pain first hand...

[1]
[https://www.rappler.com/technology/news/178792-philippines-r...](https://www.rappler.com/technology/news/178792-philippines-
rank-speedtest-global-index)

------
yesenadam
>most time spent online is done via mobile devices, with the greatest portion
of that time spent on social media

A lot of people in Phils seem to have a FB-connected mobile plan where they
can chat on FB but not see the pictures on there, although you can send them
pictures in the chat. And it only seems to connect them to FB, not the whole
internet. Just a messenger app I guess. (Most of my close friends are in the
Philippines, we chat on FB.)

~~~
StudentStuff
How would a mobile provider block pictures and other attachments inside a chat
system? See a large transfer and kill the connection?

Also, in this scenario what would stop users from using domain fronting or
encrypted SNI to access other Facebook services?

~~~
fouc
Facebook itself subsidizes a specific 'facebook data plan' with mobile
providers. It loads free.facebook.com which specifically does things to keep
data down also.

~~~
yesenadam
Yeah, that's it I think. They've said they're on the free plan or something.
(I've never had a mobile phone so not up on the jargon!)

------
nomadiccoder
I spend all day on the computer but mostly I am reading, writing, or scripting
that I'm not actually surfing the web. Then again spotify uses the internet..
I wonder how much 'internet usage' is a direct replacement for something that
is analog but has the same effect, like reading newspaper.

------
rebelpixel
Filipino internet user here. Can at least say that 10 hours a day for most
Filipinos seem accurate enough—most people here are connected to FB Messenger
via telcos' free FB promos. And a lot of Filipinos use Facebook like a
realtime social lobby, replying to comments and status updates almost
instantly.

Sadly though, most of the data probably applies to Filipinos in Metro Manila
and developed cities, and there's still a huge part of the population that do
not have access to the internet or even basic services like 24-hour
electricity.

~~~
apostacy
I visited the Philippines recently, and was shocked at how non-neutral it was.
ISPs have promotions like "free half an hour of YouTube per day". It is like
the nightmare scenario that we in the rest of the world were warned about.

Worse, someone told me that in 2012, internet service was way better, but then
they realized they could just throttle everyone down and jack the prices up.

And I also had to have a Globe and Smart SIM cards, since the two cellphone
companies have a cartel.

I loved it there, but it is a shame about the infrastructure.

~~~
axaxs
You're right, but it's not about throttling, it's about subsidies. Regardless,
data is about a dollar a gig, which is among the cheapest in the world. The
fact is, folks don't want to or more likely, can't afford it, so the
subsidized plans are more popular.

~~~
apostacy
Really?? Because I and my companions had a huge problem with data. The only
plans we could find were for things like 700M for "general use data", and the
remaining for different websites. It was expensive and slow. We weren't in
Manilla we were in rural areas mostly.

~~~
axaxs
Yeah, I've been there a lot over the past few years. The problem to me is that
there's too many different 'promos' at any given time, much like what you
mentioned. But there's always been a 1 gig, 3 day load for 50 pesos from smart
and globe.

------
kdmedev
I can say I am one of the people that made this "achievement" possible. I
spend most of my day starting at a monitor.

Kidding aside, I would not put much trust on an online statistic. Specially
since they did not even have the decency to tell us where and how they got
that info

------
geekpowa
Unsurprising Philippines is at top of list. World leader in adoption of tech
that enables social interaction.

From 2007:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-
textmessages/...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-
textmessages/filipinos-sent-1-billion-text-messages-daily-
in-2007-idUSMAN29726320080304)

Another. Undated. Avg sms per month per subscriber = 600. Or 20 a day. Which
seems low, I'm sure I've seen figures alot higher than this.

[https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-send-a-text-to-
the...](https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-send-a-text-to-the-
philippines)

~~~
poldoga
Filipino here, gonna have to agree. Its not really tech adoption but more 'new
modes of communication' adoption. We adopted SMS like wildfire and now its the
same with Facebook/Messenger. Gonna be a good bet that those 10hrs are
disproportionately spent on FB properties. Lack of net neutrality also helps
build a bigger FB wall - for most telcos its free to use messenger and
facebook.

------
nodesocket
A bit surprised, I just got back from South Korea, and Instagram is beyond
huge there. I thought American's spent a lot of time on their phones, until I
spent a month in South Korea.

~~~
max_wen
if your only comparison point is USA then that is the issue. (I am American
living in Asia 5+ years)

And yes, IG is huuuuuuuuuge in SK.

------
abhinai
I remember reading a newspaper for hours after school. Now I barely read news
for more than 30 mins a day. I am more connected but my satisfaction of the
quality of news I am consuming has gone really down.

I wonder what similar changes Philippines is seeing. People are obviously
replacing some offline activity with something similar they do online. For
example spending time with friends our neighbors in real life has now been
replaced with FB or Whatsapp. Probably because it is more convenient? Is it
better though?

~~~
barry-cotter
> I remember reading a newspaper for hours after school. Now I barely read
> news for more than 30 mins a day. I am more connected but my satisfaction of
> the quality of news I am consuming has gone really down.

Before you wasted multiple hours a day on ephemera when you could have read
something lasting or done something more fun, now you waste less than an hour.
Before you had no information sources to provide alternative viewpoints or
later, more in depth reporting after the initial flurry of news reporting. Now
you realise journalists are often ignorant, writing under really tight
deadlines and have no incentive to fix mistakes unless someone can sue them or
has their own media platform. Journalism was always awful, you just didn’t
know.

------
3xblah
There was a PBS documentary not too long ago about workers in the Phillipines
tasked with reviewing all content that is posted to websites like Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter, etc.

By the looks of it, they may easily match or exceed the daily usage of any
internet-addicted person in any country. What is the total number of people
employed in that industry there?

Would these types of industries affect the numbers?

~~~
freeflight
Any chance you are talking about The Cleaners [0]? Because that was also my
first thought when reading this.

Tho it's not actually by PBS, it was originally produced by the cooperation of
French and German public broadcasting.

But I'm glad it's finally available somewhere again. The original, publicly
funded release was depublished after 3 weeks due to specialties of the public
broadcasting agreements. They have to depublish a lot of media after only a
few weeks or else it's considered an "unfair disadvantage" for private media
companies.

[0] [http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/the-
cleaners/](http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/the-cleaners/)

------
mrhappyunhappy
How did they measure this? What qualifies as “online”? Does leaving Skype on
and open while I go about my day count me in the statistic?

~~~
smacalalag
Probably, using the average of facebook users spent scrolling to their feeds..

~~~
jcagalawan
It's not even just scrolling, a lot of my relatives who are still in the
Philippines tend to comment on or interact with just about everything that
pops up on their feed. I think it's mostly because of the widespread diaspora
and desire to stay in touch with the many people they know back home and
abroad.

------
soperj
Interesting thing I saw just today was the 2nd largest (after English)
wikipedia was Cebuano with only about 400,000 less article. And Waray-Waray is
11th! Clearly it's not all facebook.

~~~
Cyph0n
Well, that sounded suspicious, so I looked it up.

Apparently, 80-90% of the content on the Cebuano and Waray Wikipedias is
generated by Lsjbot[1].

I’m thinking of using a similar approach to bump up the number of Arabic
Wikipedia articles, but it seems like cheating to me...

[1]:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lsjbot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lsjbot)

~~~
freeflight
Woah that bot seems to be single-handedly responsible for pushing the number
of Cebuano and Swedish Wikipedia articles past the, usual, second placed
German Wikipedia?

At least I remember the German wiki being firmly placed in second place a
while ago, the numbers for active users of these wikis [0] also reinforces
that notion.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias#Detailed_li...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias#Detailed_list)

------
shriphani
A prime feature of the developing world is how full of bs a regular day is and
how much time one has to waste just doing regular stuff.

Browsing FB would be a godsend.

~~~
endisukaj
Because most first-world ubermensch spend filling and productive days doing
menial tasks for a living wage. I'm surprised how prejudicial and borderline
racist comments like this are upvoted here.

~~~
shriphani
I'm from a developing country with strong family ties to my country of origin
(I am not white).

Systemic efficiency is really high in the west. Almost top quality in
successful countries like Singapore.

A trip to some of the not so successful countries in Asia and Africa and it is
an eye-opener how much is taken for granted in a rich society.

~~~
wyclif
Yeah, I think he misunderstood your top-level comment in the thread. I'm in
the Philippines and I understood exactly what you are saying even though it
might sound negative to woke, politically-correct Western ears. There is a lot
I take for granted because I happen to have a USA passport (same could be said
for someone from Canada, UK, western Europe, AUS, NZ, etc).

The biggest among these things is infrastructure. In a lot of places in the
developing world, it just isn't there. And if it is there, it's a fairly
slapdash, ad hoc affair. Probably patched together from whatever they could
find. No real professional urban planning, either. Likely to be incredibly
compromised by political corruption and therefore working only some of the
time, since contracts are given to the local warlord's cronies and sycophants.

Look at the power grid in the Philippines. If you live anywhere in the
provinces, you'll experience constant "brownouts" where the power is
redirected or there is no failover capacity. And without that, of course,
there is no internet connectivity...

------
sunpazed
Anyone remember “Pinoy-grams” in “Cryptonomicon”? Facebook have built Neal
Stephenson‘s “Data Haven”

------
jerieljan
I'm willing to bet that our traffic situation here contributes heavily to that
metric. It's common to see commutes taking more than a couple of hours and
doubling that if you're living away from the metro.

~~~
phatfish
Somehow I don't buy that if everyone had fiber speed internet they would all
spend 10x less time on Facebook. They would consume 10x more content.

------
edpichler
After observations, I have a theory that the poorest and boring places are
potentially the ones that most use the Internet. The lack of activities makes
people look for cheap entertainment and the Internet is full of it. This
happens in small cities of Brazil. When the city doesn't have parks and
outdoor activities, people stay at games and on the Internet, because there
aren't activities to do, and get hooked. A repeated behavior became a habit.

~~~
xedeon
I was borned and raised in the Philippines and visit there frequently. I
wouldn't call it "boring". In fact far from it..

Heck, I would trade living there (currently in the U.S.) if it wasn't for the
lack of high paying tech jobs for all of the outdoor and aquatic activities
that are closely within reach after a relatively short drive.

~~~
edpichler
I am sorry, but you did not get the point. Do all small cities of Philippines
have aquatic activities and parks and outdoor activities? Why people are
trading it to stay on the Internet?

PS: I am not saying that the Philippines is not good. I am saying that the
Internet is cheap entertainment and fills a gap in places where you do not
have entertainment.

------
samstave
Around a decade or so ago I did a report on the top SMS/Texting use - and
Philippines was far-and-away number one.

