Talktalk Telecom : British families argue more than 700 times a year

19/09/2014

Chores, gadget usage and remote hogging among top gripes

• One in 10 families have daily disputes over hogging gadgets and Wi-Fi
• Age-old gripes such as homework and washing up make top 30
• Nearly half feel family life could not function without the internet

British families have cross words at home at least twice a day - mounting up to a whopping 728 times every year.

Research conducted by TalkTalk shows fallings out are headed by tiffs over household chores with the amount of time family members spend using the computer or laptop - and other gadgets or technology - filling the No2 and No3 slots.

It's a world away from the top three 10 years ago which were the time spent using the landline, using the phone after 6pm when it was cheaper and having to come off of the internet so someone else could make a call.

The findings looking at British home life and family internet usage come from TalkTalk's Superpowered Fibre Broadband study. To mark this, the company has compiled a list of the Top 30 household arguments today compared to 10 years ago.

Popular tiffs include perennial disputes such as whose turn it is to wash up and leaving the toilet seat up, to 21st century 'Wi-Fi wars' caused by family members all being logged on at the same time to surf, download or play online games, which in some homes can then slow down the overall internet speed. 

Parents of Britain's biggest family Noel and Sue Radford, best known for Channel 4's '16 Kids and Counting', are no strangers to family disputes about broadband. They commented: "With lots of us wanting to be online at the same time, slow internet used to cause real battles in our house. We found the kids were constantly scrapping over it. The boys would be upstairs on their Xbox and it would only take one of the teenagers to start downloading a film downstairs for one of the boys to come charging down the stairs and start screaming their head off."

Tristia Harrison of TalkTalk added: 'Every family experiences minor tiffs and the list of common grumbles will be familiar reading to many homes. As family life becomes busier and we have more gadgets in the home, it's become increasingly important to make sure  you're on the right broadband package for your needs.

Our advice is to look for a broadband package that's totally unlimited, this means it doesn't slow down even at peak times. If you're a family that do a lot online, opt for Fibre broadband, its download speeds are 5x faster than standard broadband which means you can do more online at the same time and avoid those disagreements."