Brits Would Rather Have Facebook than a Shower
Posted in Facebook on Monday, September 12, 2011, 07:01
A survey of 3000 adults has revealed that Facebook is seen as more of a priority in life than things like shoes, fresh fruit and vegetables, and a flushing toilet.
Conducted by the London Science Museum, the survey aimed to promote its latest exhibition, Water Wars: Fight The Food Crisis, which emphasised the need for fresh water to grow crops and the technology that could provide it.
Unsurprisingly for the Brits, Sunshine was the number 1 thing that they couldn’t live without. The museum’s Exhibition Manager, Sarah Richardson, said “Brits are obsessed by the weather, so it’s not surprising sunshine was rated as the top thing we couldn’t live without. But to say you can’t live without material things over drinking water is crazy.”
While that may be crazy, even more astonishing was number 2 which was an internet connection and number 5 which was Facebook.com. That’s right; more Brits said that they would rather have Facebook in their life than a shower (no. 13), a flushing toilet (no. 9), central heating (no. 14), fresh vegetables (no. 16), fresh fruit (no. 21) and even the UK’s free health care service, the NHS (no. 6).
Smart phones also featured at number 10 in the Top 50 list and appearances were made by laptops (no. 26), Twitter.com (no. 50) Google (no. 22), iPod (no. 37), Ebay.com (no. 35), iPad (no. 45) and a pc spell-checker (no. 41).
Of course, a survey of 3000 visitors to the Science Museum certainly isn’t representative of Britain as a whole given it’s status as one of London’s top attractions for tourists, however, the amount of technology featuring in the list indicates that society (British or not) is almost completely reliant on some form of gadget to get them through the day. Worrying?
Here’s the 50 things that Brits apparently couldn’t live without:
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 11. Tea and Coffee 12. Washing machine 13. Shower 14. Central heating 15. Painkillers 16. Fresh vegetables 17. Vacuum Cleaner 18. Kettle 19. Sofa 20. Shoes 21. Fresh fruit 22. Google 23. Car 24. Hair straighteners 25. Public transport 26. Laptop 27. Chocolate 28. DVD Player 29. Wristwatch 30. Make-up 31. Flat screen TV 32. Wedding ring 33. Tumble dryer 34. Bottled water 35. Ebay 36. Bicycle 37. Ipod 38. Air conditioning 39. Disposable nappies 40. Light bulbs 41. Spell-check 42. Sat Nav 43. Push-up bra 44. Nintendo Wii 45. iPad 46. Gym Membership 47. Season ticket to your football club 48. Freezer 49. Xbox 50. Twitter