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.