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From apps to AI search: how the UK goes online in 2025

ended 10. December 2025

We’re spending even more time online as a nation, according to Ofcom's annual Online Nation survey, published today. Adults now spend an average of four and a half hours online a day – up by 10 minutes on last year. Women spend 26 minutes a day longer online than men, with a daily average of 4hrs 43 mins. Most of the time online is spent on a smartphone, where adults use an average of 41 apps a month. WhatsApp, Facebook and Google Maps are the three most commonly used apps among adults. It's a really interesting set of findings (selected ones below) so give it a read and share your thoughts ASAP this AM.

  • Fewer adults feel freer to be themselves online than offline this year (25%, down from 30% last year), and only 35% feel they can share opinions more easily online than offline.
  • Generative AI services are gaining traction, with more people actively seeking them out. ChatGPT had 1.8 billion UK visits in the first eight months of 2025, up from 368 million in same period of 2024.
  • Two major tech firms now account for more than half of the time people in the UK spend online. YouTube is the most used Alphabet-owned service, used by 94% of adults. Time on YouTube is increasing, reaching an average of 51 minutes a day, not including the TV set. The combination of Facebook and Messenger (93% adults) is the most widely used Meta service, followed by WhatsApp (90% adults).
  • Late-night scrolling among children is common. Across four of the main services used by children - YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok and WhatsApp - 15-24% of the time spent for the whole 8-14 age range happens between 9pm and 5am. 4–10% of usage happens after 11pm, depending on the platform.
  • Children said that they were encouraged to spend money in various ways online, including character customisation (30%), adverts (27%), recommendations from friends or family (23%) and influencer content (22%).
  • But a third of children (32%) regretted the purchases they’d made in-game, and 43% regretted purchases made on social media. While 42% were unclear on what they even were buying in games.

5 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Scott GallacherVerified
Director at Rowley Turton
Most of these figures are hardly surprising to anyone living in the modern world, although we should all be concerned about children's access to, and use of, many online services. Long gone are the days when there was one family computer, and parents could at least try to place some restrictions on their children's screen time and what they accessed. And the idea of children, unsupervised, being on tablets or smartphones into the small hours is frankly frightening. Even for adults, the power of a small number of tech companies to hook us, influence what we read, hear, watch, and even think, while harvesting our personal data all the time, is scary. We really need our government to regulate this sector and protect us, but sadly, it seems unable to stand up to the USA and Trump in particular in this area.
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Philly PonniahVerified
Chartered Wealth Manager and Financial Coach at Philly Financial
Adults are spending more time online, but it’s the impact on children that worries me most. I’ve worked with parents whose children were burning through hundreds of pounds a month on games without really understanding what they were buying. One client’s son was spending £1500 a month before they even realised. The online world pushes children to spend through nudges that feel harmless in the moment. Customising characters or following an influencer’s recommendation feels fun, not a financial commitment. Yet a third of kids regret in-game purchases and almost half regret what they buy through social media, which shows how confusing these systems are by design. Kids aren’t making bad choices. They’re up against platforms built to keep them hooked and spending, often late at night when self control is lowest. Parents need clearer tools and tighter safeguards so they’re not fighting this battle alone.
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Kate AllenVerified
Owner at Finest Stays
Ofcom’s latest data is a jolt. If adults struggle to resist the dopamine pull of our digital world, children stand no chance. Late-night scrolling, in-app nudges, and regretful purchases show how deeply they’re being drawn into systems designed to hook them. Adapt or die may be the reality, but the emotional cost is rising fast.

For marketers, though, the insights are gold. YouTube’s grip - nearly an hour a day for 94% of adults - signals huge appetite and opportunity. With two tech giants now commanding over half of UK online time, our budgets will naturally follow the attention. This report isn’t just a warning; it’s a map of where influence now lives.
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Rohit Parmar-MistryVerified
Founder at Pattrn Data
We are close to realising Nolan Sorrento’s vision for the OASIS in Ready Player One: a hellscape where we fill 80% of a user's visual field with advertisements "before inducing seizures". The difference is, in the movie, the heroes fought back. In 2025, we’re just scrolling through it.
The Ofcom stats are damning. 43% of children regret their social media purchases and a third regret in-game spending, that isn't "user error", that's predatory design working exactly as intended. We aren't building digital tools for human connection anymore; we are building relentless extraction machines. We have allowed tech giants to gamify consumption to the point where they are monetising our children’s confusion and lack of impulse control.
We need to stop applauding rising "engagement metrics" and start asking if we actually want to live in a world where every pixel is for sale. Technology should serve humans, not treat them like livestock in a digital pen waiting to be sold to the highest bidder.
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Patricia McGirrVerified
Founder at Repossession Rescue Network
Families are online for longer because digital life has become a survival tool as much as a social one. For many households, scrolling is where you find the discount codes, the price trackers and the deals that help a tight budget stretch a little further. But when two tech giants control half our online time, the power balance is skewed. Consumers think they’re browsing freely. The platforms are busy shaping behaviour.

For children the risks are even starker. They’re up late, nudged into spending on games and features they barely understand and regret soon after. That isn’t youthful impulse. It’s design geared towards extraction.

If we are spending four and a half hours a day online, the least the industry can do is make sure the digital world is built for consumers, not just for conversion.