Would you give up sex for the Internet? Report reveals surprising data

The Boston Consulting Group

(CBS News) Would you give up sex or showers for access to Facebook? New data yields surprising results.

Part of a recent report published by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) includes a survey of consumers in the G-20 countries, asking them what lifestyle habit they would sacrifice for one year to keep the Internet.

BCG surveyed about 1,000 people in each of several G-20 nations on what "lifestyle habit" they would give up instead of the Internet for a year, including sex, alcohol, showers and cars.

Most of the results for items like coffee, chocolate and fast food were steady with averages of 70-80 percent. The biggest discrepancies among nations were in lifestyle habits like showering, sex and driving.

A moderate 21 percent of Americans would give up sex to keep the Internet on for a year. Japan topped the list of citizens who would make the sacrifice, with 56 percent who would abstain from sex. Brazilians were the least likely to give up sex for the web access - only 12 percent surveyed would give it up.

The most hygienic nation of the bunch was France, with only 5 percent willing to give up showers for the Internet. The U.S. came in second place with 7 percent and Brazil in third with 8 percent.

American and South Africans were most attached to their vehicles - only 10 percent each were willing to give up their cars for the Internet. About 56 percent of the Chinese would rather have web access than a car.

The BCG report titled "The Internet Economy in the G-20: The $4.2 Trillion Opportunity," is an analysis of how Internet-economic growth impacts countries, cultures and companies worldwide. The survey weighing lifestyle habits versus Internet access is part of a greater snapshot of each G-20 nation.

Another interesting finding was the perceived value of the Internet versus its actual cost. For instance, Americans value the Internet at $3,000. According to BCG, it's value is actually $472 - an incredible markup in price based on perception.

According to BCG data and projections, there will be 3 billion Internet users globally by 2016. Currently, there are 1.9 billion online worldwide. And the Internet economy for the G-20 nations will grow to $4.2 trillion.

The full report can be found at the BCG Perspectives website.

[slatep]

Stop wasting money on ridiculous surveys and put it where it will do somebody some good.

You obviously have too much time on your hands.

[micmac666]

That's about right. I'd give up the first 21%.

[Zann-Zel]

Would you give up sex for Internet?
---------------
Are you CRAZY???
I love my internet but not THAT much!

[longtree-2009]

if i could have a different female every day, at my choosing without paying or having to take her out on a date, then heck yeah would definitely give up the internet. giving up sex with the same old same old female, none meaning age but the same one you have doing it with for a year or so, is easy to do.

[Truth_Guru]

Why do we have these so obviously stupid surveys and who pays for them?? Here are some more examples of some Surveys/studies and their results:

1. Couple who fights tend to have least happy life and more likely to devorce.

2. Children whose parents are devorced are less happy then those children whose parents live together.

3. Current financial troubles have cause depression also.

4. Poor people tend to have more problems.

5. eating too much unhealthy food can cause problems to your body.

6. Children/people who use computers/video games 4-5 hours a day tend to spend less time with thier parents or friends/relatives.

7. Married couple who fight less are happier then single people who do not have partner

Well, what can you expect in a country where you have to write on a steaming hot coffee cup that "it is hot".

[werntrouble]

Hmmmmmm.. Methinks the people who did this study need to get out more.

In any case, we are mostly all so dependent on the internet (email, online banking, searching for information, paying our bills, gaming, etc.) that I doubt we could survive without it. So, sadly, I must say that if you told me it was sex or the internet, I'd have to choose the internet, at least, for a period of time, i.e, until I could rearrange how I do almost everything such that it could be done via snail mail, in the library or via telephone or some other ancient mode of getting stuff done.

However, if you told me that my choice was forever, I'd choose sex! Life is just too short to give up our fundamental biological purpose. Besides, when I'm on my deathbed, I'm sure I'll be thinking about my family and my relationships, not some stupid computer or other portal to the internet.

[fredisalive]

if you can give up sex for a year for anything, you're probably not having much of it already! No you don't give up sex, you give up some ridiculous questions!

[Robert_Rogers]

The foundation of the Internet was laid upon porn. That was when the download speed was 14.4 baud and it took an hour to download a dirty picture.

[RichZubaty]

I already DID give up sex to keep my sanity, and got internet porn as a door prize.

[Wookiee-1138]

In a heartbeat. Meatspace sucks and the people in it even moreso.

"A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and still he'd see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void...The Sprawl was a long strange way home over the Pacific now, and he was no console man, no cyberspace cowboy. Just another hustler, trying to make it through. But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, his hands clawed into the bedslab, temperfoam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn't there.

Case was twenty-four. At twenty-two, he'd been a cowboy, a rustler, one of the best in the Sprawl. He'd been trained by the best, by McCoy Pauley and Bobby Quine, legends in the biz. He'd operated on an almost permanent adrenaline high, a byproduct of youth and proficiency, jacked into a custom cyberspace deck hat projected his disembodied consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was the matrix. A their, he'd worked for other, wealthier thieves, employers who provided the exotic software required to penetrate the bright walls of corporate systems, opening windows into rich fields of data.

He'd made the classic mistake, the one he'd sworn he'd never make. He stole from his employers. He kept something for himself and tried to move it through a fence in Amsterdam. He still wasn't sure how he'd been discovered, not that it mattered now. He'd expected to die, then but they only smiled. Of course he was welcome, they told him, welcome to the money. And he was going to need it. Because--still smiling--they were going to make sure he never worked again.

They damaged his nervous system with a wartime Russian mycotoxin.

Strapped to a bed in a Memphis hotel, his talent burning out micron by micron, he hallucinated for thirty hours.

The damage was minute, subtle, and utterly effective.

For Case, who'd lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall. In the bars he'd frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh."