What Happens to Internet Usage Levels Over the Holidays?

Internet usage does not plummet over the holidays. This should come as no surprise to anyone appalled by the amount of the ostensibly surreptitious texting and internet surfing going on around, under and at the family dinner table. 

But we're not talking just about Christmas. As the following article explains, usage dips during dinner hours during most major holidays - of whatever religion: Ramadan, Yom Kippur, etc.

And then, around the world, as soon as it seems appropriate or at least only marginally offensive, everyone is right back at it. Usage appears to decline during certain hours at the height of various holidays, but there is even some evidence that people make up for the 'lost' time by increasing their use later. We may have different mores, values and traditions, but some behaviors are universal. JL

Joshua Brustein reports in Business Week:

Leaving the Internet for a few hours during dinner on major holidays—and then returning with a vengeance—seems to be a universal trait.
Is the Internet as much of a ghost town as your workplace over the holiday season? Nope. Internet usage is likely to be higher than usual for the rest of the week, according to Sandvine, a firm that tracks Internet traffic. The only exception: a few hours on Christmas Eve, when people have no choice but to put away devices and talk to one another.
The graphic below shows data from 2013, when Christmas Eve fell on a Tuesday. The data don't include traffic on mobile networks, but do include people using mobile devices connected to Wi-Fi.
People tended to start using the Internet slightly later over the course of the week, probably because they weren't at work. For the same reason, the rate of daytime Internet use was unusually high. Starting the day after Christmas, Internet use in 2013 surged, probably because people were trying out devices they had just received.
Leaving the Internet for a few hours during dinner on major holidays—and then returning with a vengeance—seems to be a universal trait, according to Dan Deeth, a spokesman for Sandvine. "These are global trends," he says. "The trend you see in the U.S. on Christmas, you see similar things in Muslim countries around Ramadan."