Daytime is prime time

Workforce, June, 2003 by Janet Wiscombe

Affluent, top-level professionals--especially those who've been online for seven or more years--are the biggest users of the Internet at work. But they aren't slackers surfing the Net for fun. A new study conducted by the Online Publishers Association and Millward Brown Intelli-Quest focuses on how the media is consumed in the workplace. For those in workforce management, the results confirm what many already know: daytime on the Internet is prime time for experienced users, and online activities vary by demographic group and time of day.

Usage among executives exceeds all other at-work usage in the daytime by anywhere from 5 to 13 percentage points, says Michael Zimbalist, executive director of the association. The greatest percentage--81 percent--are found online in the morning before lunch. That is because professionals tend to use the Internet in the morning to keep up with the news and to prepare for meetings. Members of this group tend to go online to shop at night, the study reports. A slightly larger share of affluent workers-- those with annual incomes of $75,000 and above--also like to go online to shop during the lunch hour, and are more likely than others to be online throughout the day until evening, when average income levels of online users decline.

Of the at-work audience--defined as users who say they've accessed the Internet from work within the past 30 days for purposes other than e-mail--nearly 3 in 10 indicate that the Internet is the only medium they use during the daytime.

"This research broadens our understanding of the at-work audience and the subtle differences in how key demographic groups use online media throughout the day," Zimbalist says.

The study concludes that the online tenure--the number of years a user has been online--is a key determinant of usage levels and activity. For every surveyed online activity, the more tenured users displayed higher usage levels than the less tenured users--those online four years or less. The association reports that this indicates that the more familiar users become with online media, the more ways they find to integrate it into their lives.

Other surveys show similar findings. In a report released last October, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that the computer-use rate for managers and professionals was about 80 percent in September 2001.

The UCLA Internet Project, a comprehensive, year-to-year examination of the impact of online technology on America, reported in February that overall Internet access remained generally stable from 2001 to 2002, but that the number of hours users spent online continued to increase.

The UCLA survey compared the online activities of new and experienced users. New users participated more in chat rooms and game playing. Experienced users did far more stock trading, looking for news, and professional work.