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| Summary of Findings |
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| Summary of SIP Adult Survey 2001 |
| Overall Computer and Internet use |
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49.7% of adult Singaporeans used a computer |
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40.8% of adult Singaporeans were Internet users |
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The most frequent reasons for not using the Internet were: ·did not know how to or were confused by the technology·, ·no time· and ·no interest·. |
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27.0% of the non-users said they were likely to use the Internet within the next year while 55.9% said it would be unlikely that they would do so. |
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| Internet Usage |
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Internet users spent an average of 15.4 hours per week online. |
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They logged on 8.6 hours per week from home and 6.5 hours from school/work. |
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Information seeking was the popular online activity for users at 5.8 hours per week. |
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Email came in second at 4.6 hours per week. |
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Majority of the users did not make any transactions at home. |
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77.5% used only English while online. A total of 15.9%, 5.4% 0.5% said they also used Chinese, Malay and Tamil respectively. |
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| Digital Divide |
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A digital divide exists in Singapore along the lines of gender, age, housing and income · males, younger, and richer people were more likely to be Internet users. |
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| E-Commerce |
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Only 8.1% of the Internet users made online purchases for personal purposes in the past 12 months. |
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A higher percentage 12.7% of Internet users made non-purchase related transactions in the past 12 months. |
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Online transactions in Singapore remained rare. |
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| Family Interaction and Activities |
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Internet users dine less frequently with their families as compared to non-users. |
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Internet users spent 26.9 hours per week socialising with family members while non-users spent 30.8 hours doing so. |
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More than three quarters of Internet users felt that the time spent with family had not change after using the Internet. Small proportion reported less or more interaction with their family after Internet use. |
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| Social Interaction and social contacts |
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Email continued to be a popular communication tool among Internet users: 95.0% used it to communicate with friends, and 55.6% used it to communicate with colleagues |
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More Internet users reported an increase than those who reported a decrease in social contact with people that share their hobbies, political interests and profession. Only in regards to social contact with people who share their religion, there were more respondents indicating a decrease than those who indicated an increase. |
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| Working Life |
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A substantial proportion of Internet users reported beneficial effects of the Internet on the working life, such as flexibility (32.7%), productivity (46.1%) and creativity (38.9%). However, it has also increased work load (26.4%) and stress (21.5%) for about a quarter of the users. Most people however indicated no change. |
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Majority of Internet users (88.8%) indicated that they did not bring more work home to do outside of normal office hours with the use of the Internet. An even bigger proportion (95.3%) did not work more at home during normal office hours with the use of the Internet. |
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| Perception of the Internet |
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Internet users and non-users differed in their perception of the Internet. The vast majority of Internet users (76.7% to 89.4%) thought that the Internet was important, useful, interesting, convenient and not difficult to use. However, only a small proportion of non-users (from 21.0% to 29.6%) thought the same. |
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The majority of the Internet users did not believe that the Internet would increase their political empowerment while majority of non-users were unsure about it. |
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| Who is responsible for regulation? |
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Both Internet users and non-users indicated that Internet regulation should be borned by multiple parties. A vast majority of Internet users and non-users (94.4% and 85.3% respectively) believed that the individuals should be primarily responsible for regulating of the Internet. |
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About the same percentage of Internet users and non-users (in the range of 75%) thought that family, Internet Service Providers, government and central body should be responsible for Internet regulation. |
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| Media Use |
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Majority of Internet users reported no change in their consumption of traditional media, such as television and the newspapers. |
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For both Internet users and non-users, the most important source of information in general was the newspapers. For users, it is followed by television, Internet, interpersonal contacts and radio. For non-users, it is followed by television, radio, interpersonal contacts and the Internet. |
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Internet users tend to watch less television than non-users. However, both spent about the same amount of time listening to radio and reading newspapers. |
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| For the detailed report, click here to download. |
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