New research from broadband ISP TalkTalk has revealed that faster broadband connections could be to blame for making us increasingly impatient with both the slow nature of the offline world and some elements of the online one. Some 70% of us confess to “losing it” if we have to wait longer than one minute for a web page to load, which is one heck of a slow site.

TalkTalk asked people to tell them when they reached breaking point for a number of common activities. From this the ISP worked out the nation’s average “point of impatience” (we'll call it PoI). Top of the list is "being kept on hold", with the average Brit reaching PoI after 5 mins and 4 seconds; less time than they’re prepared to wait for a kettle to boil (5 mins 6 secs).


The research also found that those who grew up alongside the Internet are significantly less prepared to wait. One-third of 18-24 year olds expect to wait a maximum of 10 seconds for an Internet page to load compared to only 10% of over 65s, the majority of whom (64%) were happy to wait up to a minute.