Picture the scene: You’re on an important video call when the screen freezes. From the distance you hear shouts of frustration because a game is lagging. Then Netflix starts to buffer. Disaster… under all the strain of your daily use, your internet connection just isn’t able to cope!
If this feels like a daily battle, that’s probably because it is. And it’s happening to more people than you think. Two new reports paint a clear picture of why so many families are struggling with their broadband. And it’s all down to the changing ways we use our internet connections.
A recent Zen study of 2,000 parents found that children’s demands are having a huge impact on the modern home. In fact, one in 10 parents have changed their broadband provider specifically because of pressure from their kids.
The study found that nearly half of all parents – 48 per cent – feel pressured by their children on household decisions, with the internet being a major point of contention. And with many kids spending upwards of four hours a day online, it’s easy to see why.
So, what are they doing online? A separate report from the media regulator, Ofcom, gives us the answer. It confirms that streaming is king.
Ofcom’s report shows that YouTube is now the second-most watched service in the UK, ahead of ITV. For one in five children, it’s the very first thing they turn on when they switch on the TV.
This lines up perfectly with our own findings, which show the top online activities of UK children are gaming (61 per cent) and watching streaming platforms like YouTube (60 per cent). And with the summer holidays upon us, 54 per cent of parents expect their family’s internet use to go up even more.
A strained connection affects the whole household, especially when parents are working from home. So it’s no surprise that a quarter of home-working parents – 24 per cent – told us that slow internet speed was their greatest challenge.
Those difficulties lead to desperate measures, like sitting right next to the router to get the best signal (something 34 per cent of parents admitted to) or telling other users to disconnect completely (35 per cent). Juggling work and family life is hard enough without having to ration out bandwidth.
Not too long ago, having a connection that could smoothly handle so many activities at once would have been a luxury. But our internet usage has changed beyond recognition.
With home working now the norm, streaming overtaking regular TV in popularity, and such a large part of our lives being spent online, the minimum broadband requirements for an average family have evolved.
Our experts recommend a download speed of around 100 Mbps if you want to seamlessly game and take video calls at the same time. But what happens if other family members are streaming or downloading too?
At Zen, we believe your broadband should make life easier, not more stressful. So how can you ensure that broadband bandwidth isn’t a pain this summer?
First of all, we’d recommend checking your broadband speed. You can use sites like speedtest.net or fast.com to do that, and we’d also advise you to carry out speed checks on various devices in different rooms around your house.
When you’ve done that, enter your postcode on our site to see what broadband speeds are available at your address. If a speed boost is all you need, then that’s all there is to it.
But your speed tests could reveal something different. If you’re getting much better speeds in the room with your router than in other rooms around the house, you might just benefit from a mesh WiFi system. Mesh WiFi is designed to keep the wireless signal from your router strong and stable throughout the house.
For the ultimate home WiFi setup, we recommend choosing a Zen EveryRoom or eero service.
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