The Guardian newspaper says that the average internet user reads more words than were contained in War and Peace every day. According to figures that they have worked out each new sites has 450 links on their homes pages, whereas 10 years ago they averaged just 12 links per home page.

If you pick up a US or UK newspaper you'll see four to six stories on the front page and maybe eight to 10 refers to other stories, that's an average total of 12 headlines on one page. In contrast, the average news website has 335 story or section links on their homepage. So we're showing people online 300 more options on one page than we show them in print.

If you visit 200 web pages in one day, which is fairly average you'll see on average 490,000 words; War & Peace was only 460,000 words. Of course it is not clear if you will read all those words. Studies show that few readers get past the sixth paragraph in a news story however interesting it is.

It would be better if I was going to insult you to do it in this paragraph, or even better the next one.

Just kidding.

More here.