US men like watching TV first while women like surfing the web

The “Magid Media Futures” report by Frank N. Magid Associates and sponsored by Metacafe reveals that US male Internet users spend their leisure time watching TV, followed by using the Internet, playing console games, sports and exercise, while the most popular activity for female Web users is surfing the Net, followed by watching TV, reading books and listening to music.

Males aged 12 to 24 said their favorite thing to do was play console games and girls ages 12 to 17 cited listening to music and text messaging as their favorite way to pass time.

The top two leisure activities for both sexes were going online and watching TV and the least popular were reading print media, text messaging and talking on mobile and home phones.

With the exception of those ages 55 to 64, more women cited going online as their favorite leisure activity than men of the same age, says the report.

In addition, women of all ages were more likely to list reading books as their favorite activity than men, while men ages 35 to 54 were significantly more likely to prefer TV than any other age or gender group.