12 September 2011 | Author: R Wood Media Intern

Facebook flushes away competing concerns

Adults living in Britain would rather live without a toilet than Facebook, a study recently found.

Carried out in conjunction with its exhibition 'Water Wars: Fight the Food Crisis', the London Science
Museum asked participants to rank the things they couldn't live without.

Exhibition manager Sarah Richardson described the results from the survey as "crazy".

"To say you can't live without material things over drinking water is crazy. It seems having fresh drinking water is something that many of us take for granted," she told The Daily Mail.

The survey intended to demonstrate how important clean drinking water is, but when the results came in, there were some curious findings.

While clean drinking water ranked third, Britons rated an internet connection more important, coming in second place.

Social networking giant Facebook ranked in fifth place, out-muscling flushing toilets, central heating, shoes, vegetables and public transport.

While Facebook ranked at number five, Google and Twitter also ranked at numbers 22 and 50, respectively.

Founded in 2004, Facebook now boasts over 750 million users worldwide, with people spending 700 billion minutes on the social networking site each month.

Facebook may expand its influence to include music streaming at the f8 conference later this month.

The Palo Alto giant has been the source of constant debate since its rise to prominence, with privacy issues at the foreground of people's minds as they start to share more online.

The science museum study emphasises the stronghold social networking sites and internet use have on the day-to-day activities of the average person living in Britain, with the devices people use to go online with - smart phones, laptops, iPads - all ranking highly as well.

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