A study conducted by the Science Museum in London has revealed that the Internet and Facebook rank higher than basic necessities in a list of fifty things that the British public said they cannot do without.
The study, incidentally, was conducted to show the importance of clean drinking water. While drinking water was ranked third, above Facebook, the results were not quite what one would expect.
Facebook was ranked fifth in the list. Clean and flushing toilets were ranked ninth!
Similarly, an Internet connection was ranked at number two, just after sunshine, which of course most Britishers are known to be quite starved of.
Ironically, another survey conducted earlier this year found that nearly 50% of men accessed the Internet on their mobile while in the toilet.
Technological advances and social networks have been given predominance over other requirements such as washing machines, showers, fresh fruit and vegetables, pain killers and even shoes. However, to give them more importance than food, clothing and the basic sanitary facility of flushing toilets, seems rather extreme.
The study polled 3,000 British residents, many of whom could possibly have been young adults, who tend to dramatise the importance of trivial things and have never had to live without the ‘comforts’ of clean toilets being available to them.
The top 10 items in the list were as follows.
1. Sunshine
2. Internet connection
3. Clean drinking water
4. Fridge
5. Facebook
6. NHS
7. Cooker
8. Email
9. Flushing toilet
10. Mobile phone / smartphone
In fact, 4 out of the 10 most important things the respondents said they couldn’t live without are completely unrelated to the sustenance of life. Even more ridiculous is the fact that 15 out of the 50 “essentials” were items such as eBay, iPods and Twitter, which didn’t even exist 20 years ago!
Are the British public really such a nation of airheads or was this just another survey with a poorly chosen sample showing “stats” that are far from reality?
