This dataset concerns the timing of Internet traffic associated with everyday activities. It provides evidence about patterns of data demand from two different sources: time-use diaries and analysis of data usage by Android smartphones and tablets.

1. Time-use diaries

File: Diaries_TVAndTimeOnline

This is a summarised record produced from 16 time-use diaries completed by volunteers in the UK, for one week falling sometime between July and October 2016 (not the same week). The file summarises the time of day (averaged across the week) when three activities were recorded: 'TV watching', 'online activities’ conducted anywhere, and those ‘online activities’ conducted at home. This was recorded by the diarist in two ways:
1) For two days of the week, diarists recorded all their activities in their own words on a schedule sheet. Categories were assigned for each half hour interval by the analyst based on what diarists had written.
2) For the other five days of the week, diarists recorded their activities by marking the relevant times in a table for when they were online, watching TV, and at home.
A summary of the ages, working and living status of the participants is given on the notes page.

2. Smartphone and tablet data usage

File: DeviceAnalyzer_SmartphoneTabletData

This is a summary of the results of a secondary analysis conducted, on a pre-existing data set generated by the ordinary use of smartphones and tablets. The data was collected through an Android application, Device Analyzer, available on the Google Play store which captures usage statistics about the device in the background, as it is used by volunteers who have installed the app. This includes volumes of data used by particular applications. The application was designed by researchers at Cambridge University who curate and share data with other researchers, where volunteers have given their permission for this. More information and instructions on how to access the Device Analyzer dataset are provided here: https://deviceanalyzer.cl.cam.ac.uk/.

We analysed a subset of this data where: (1) logs consisted of at least 14 days with the latest data collected on or after 1st January 2014 up until 21 September 2016, (2) had a network-based location in the UK or Ireland for at least half of the contribution days, and (3) used apps or demanded data during their logging period. This resulted in 398 devices. Due to anonymity restrictions associated with this dataset, we do not know the age, gender or device make-up of this sample; all those who participated indicate they were over 18 years old.

The file included here has been produced from scripts written by one of the authors and run on the dataset in co-ordination with researchers at Cambridge University. It presents the hourly distribution of data demanded by the device (upload and download) by day of the week and across app categories (as an average of those devices on which apps within each category were used). The number of devices active within the category is provided in brackets next to each category name.