By Rachel Tait (Contributor) – Email
How much time do you spend on the web? According to an article by Julia Alexander of the Toronto Sun, Canadians spend more time on the internet than the rest of the world. A further study by Com Score Canada tallied up that in 2015, Canadians visited an average of 80 websites and spent at least 36.3 hours online a month. Multiply that by 12, if you will, and that’s 1,461 websites and 435.6 hours a year.
So, how does the time add up so fast? What possesses us to visit 80-plus websites a month? What distracts us so powerfully that we are swayed to use up an average of 9.07 hours a week on the internet alone? Two words come to mind: cute and cuddly. While there are many online distractions such as music, games, and sales, the growing trend according to digitaltrends.com seems to be viewing adorable pictures of pets in funny poses, wearing hats, or just being downright cute.
Over the last week, I asked several different people what distracts them most on the internet, and most claimed they are distracted by pictures of cute animals. On Reddit, there is r/Aww, a specific subreddit for uploading pictures and videos of anything people find adorable. If you read the beige box at the right-hand side, you will see that it has over 7.8 million readers. This means at least 7.8 million people have looked at cute pictures of animals on this site alone. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are also among the highest ranking sites viewers go to for cute pics. And thanks to online cookies, the internet can provide even more links to cute stuff based on previous searches.
Having so many resources at our disposal for uploading and viewing cute pictures, it is easy to understand why so many have turned to this particular genre to release their playful side. The growing popularity of creating accounts just for animals and pets can be debated as ridiculous, but it is a leading form of entertainment nonetheless. Ironically enough, some owners have fewer followers than their pets do!
After researching and experimenting with this genre, my initial belief that it was a waste of time has changed; I now see it as a nice break from the mundane. For those opposed to the cute and furry, a study led by researcher Hiroshi Nittono at Hiroshima University confirms that looking at cute animals improves work productivity and performance. According to a study detailed in scientific journal NeuroImage, simply seeing babies triggers a caregiving impulse, so theories suggest that perhaps looking at cute animals feels good because of their similarities to babies.
This logic explains clearly why we find animals so loveable. If you think about it, most people find babies and animals very adorable, and the very mention of those two words brings about a happy feeling inside. So, if you go on the internet and start browsing all the popular sites, remember that from time to time it is beneficial to become distracted staring at the adorable faces of those beautiful animals after all!
