by A.Canadian.
"Residents of Canada are more likely to use the Internet on a regular basis than anyone else on the planet"
According to an article by Etan Vlessing of Reuters, approximately 68% of Canadians regularly surf the World Wide Web. Tied for second place are France and Britain at 62%, followed by Germany at 60% and the United States at 59%. The lowest percentage of Internet users are from Italy, where only 36% of the population regularly go online.
Furthermore, according to Vlessing, "Web-addicted Canadians now spend an average 42 hours a month surfing the Web, up from 40 hours in 2009, and view an average 147 videos a month on YouTube and other online video websites… and around 17 million Canadians, or 51% of the population, have Facebook accounts. Canada has a vibrant Twitterverse, with an estimated 5% of the traffic routinely following the world domination of homegrown pop idol Justin Bieber."
The study results led Globe and Mail reporter Les Perreaux to wonder why Canadians were so much more likely to surf the Internet and be active online.
In a Wednesday article, which was reprinted on the newspaper's website, Perreaux wrote, "Could it be the cold winters that drive us inside or the vast expanses that keep our families divided? … While there’s no shortage of data documenting the trend, there has been little study to explain exactly why we spend up to 50 percent more time online than people in the United States, United Kingdom or Australia."
"Nobody has the answer to that question," Queen's University Professor Sidney Eve Matrix told Perreaux. "Everybody has the statistics, but nobody has a firm answer to the question, 'Why, why, why, why?' … Maybe we stay inside and get bored. I know I’d rather sit around and connect with my friends on Facebook than drive in extreme weather [to see them.]"
Kaan Yigit, a new-media analyst and president of Toronto-based Solutions Research Group (SRG), also offered several other possible factors for the statistics. Among them are the reasonable price and good quality of broadband access in Canada, high levels of isolation, and the harsh Canadian winters that tend to make residents there "a little more homebound than average."
time staying inside 
