The cost of Internet won’t stop Canadians, eh?

Despite strict bandwidth caps and pricey usage-based billing, Canadians are using the Internet more than any other country, according to new data from comScore.

Back in December we reported that Canadians were smoking the rest of the world on YouTube hits, visiting the site over 21 million times every month. We also noted that Facebook had penetrated over 51% of the Canadian population based on Socialbakers’ Facebook statistics. Now, Canadians are taking the lead in web activity, spending more time on the web and visiting more websites per month than any other place on earth.

Canucks like to think they’re a progressive bunch and the comScore data validates and confirms the truth– the Great White North is almost doubling the worldwide average in Internet usage per month. Canada has a truly digital culture.

The comScore report highlights that Canadians are spending an average of 43.5 hours a month surfing the web, exceeding the worldwide average of 23.1 hours. It also states that the number of unique online visitors in Canada hit approximately 23 million users in the fourth quarter of 2010. Pretty good for a population of just over 34 million.

Aside from the explosion of smartphones making the Internet readily available, Canadians 55 years + are engaging the web more often. It’s a demographic that has increased by 12 percent between late 2009 and 2010. We should also note that there was a slight decline in other demographics — even within the Zuckerberg-generation.

In the report, Ontario lead the other provinces capturing 38 percent of total usage. Country wide, males and females were equally ranked in time spent online however, the type of sites accessed varied. From December 2009 to December 2010 blogs and social networking also increased by 9 and 13 percent.

More women were accessing Food, Beauty/Fashion/Style and Health sites in Q4 2010, while men were drawn to Humor, Incentives and Movie sites.

Out of the 11 countries researched, Canada additionally ranked #1 in website visits, coming in at 95.2 sites visited per month. Although Canada lost to South Korea on page views, on average Canadians are viewing 3,349 pages per month, 1216 more than the worldwide total.

Canadians are spending the majority of time using directory sites like Google and surfing technology and newspaper sites. It’s also mentioned that there has been a shift in activity within political news websites which saw a 47 per cent increase.

More Canadians were accessing Community and Entertainment sites in Q4 2010. Political News sites saw the strongest growth, up 47 percent versus year ago.

It’s interesting to hear these numbers considering the frequent complaining we hear from Canadians on the web regarding the cost of Internet usage (myself included) — we’re obviously not ready to curb our fierce appetite for the web just yet. The report featuring 11 countries including the U.S., Germany and UK can be accessed at comScore.

The Globe and Mail, comScore, Image, Image