British adults are more frequent users of social networking sites than any of their European counterparts, figures from Ofcom, the communications regulator, indicated yesterday.

Four in ten Britons use their internet connection to keep in touch with their friends on networking websites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace. The figure compares with 17 per cent in France, 12 per cent in Germany and 22 per cent in Italy.

Within the main industrial nations the British fervour for such sites – to which users make an average of 23 visits and spend more than 5 hours each month – is surpassed only by Canada.

Social networking sites, which are used for chatting, sharing gossip and meeting new friends, were once the preserve of the young. Facebook, one of the best-known networking sites, with 55 million members, was open initially only to students at Harvard University, where it began as an online student yearbook.

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But the explosive growth of the sites has meant that the phenomenon has reached the adult mainstream. Many adults are also exploiting social networking sites for business purposes.

Ofcom said that the relatively high usage among British adults was largely because of the greater number of women using the internet in Britain. Today, among people aged between 25 and 34, women account for 55 per cent of the time spent online.

It was also, the regulator said, partly because of the shared language between Britain and the US, where many of the best-known sites originated. Britons were more “culturally disposed” to tap into US trends, Ofcom said.

The British enthusiasm for such sites is expected to come as unwelcome news to employers, who are already concerned that staff spend too much time contacting friends and looking at photos and newsfeeds when they should be working.

In the summer, Tesco, Britain’s biggest supermarket chain, became the latest employer to ban the use of Facebook by blocking access. It said that access was allowed only if employees could make a case for using it for their work.

The Trades Union Congress is campaigning for employees to be allowed to use such sites – albeit within employer guidelines.

Ofcom’s annual International Communications Market report also disclosed a widespread dissatisfaction among British internet users with their broadband services – in particular the speed.

Britons were found to suffer from the biggest gap between the advertised speed of their “always-on” service and the actual speed that they received. While 47 per cent of consumers said that they had been promised a headline speed of up to 8 megabits per second or higher, only 23 per cent thought that this was true of the actual speed that they received from their product.

Overall, broadband speeds in Britain lag behind many other European countries. Recent research showed that only six out of twenty-three European countries studied had slower internet connections than Britain.

The highest speed on offer from British Telecom, the country’s biggest provider, is 8 megabits per second, compared with 50 megabits elsewhere.

Ofcom has blamed the difference between actual and received broadband speeds on various factors including the quality and length of the line from the exchange to the customer’s home. Yesterday it said that it was working with the Advertising Standards Authority to ensure that customers were not misled.