A recent survey on mobile internet in Bangladesh shows that 70 percent of users spend more than an hour on social networking sites.

About 23 percent of them spend more than five hours on the social networking sites a day, according to the survey conducted by UCWeb, a Chinese mobile internet company.

UCWeb conducted the survey on December 9-10 in the country through online voting. Facebook was officially blocked at that time.

Of the 7,395 respondents, 6,269 people or about 85 percent said they use Facebook or Facebook messenger.

About 36.2 percent use WhatsApp, 29 percent use Viber, 19.4 percent Skype, and 6.7 percent use Tango, according to the study.

As of November, there were 53.94 million active internet connections in Bangladesh, with about 95 percent of them using mobile internet.

Around 75.6 percent of the respondents said social networking is good for daily life, while 6.8 percent think that it is not helpful for daily life.

Facebook is the most popular social networking platform in Bangladesh with 18 million active accounts.

The study also found that 50.6 percent of mobile internet users have more than 300 friends on Facebook.

About 6 in every 10 people are likely to physically meet their online friends in social gatherings.

As profile pictures may help users get new friends, 80.7 percent of the social network users consider the Facebook profile picture important, according to the study.

On their findings, UCWeb said Bangladeshis love to use social networking sites as it is a 'social' nation.

Local experts said as Facebook is gaining popularity in this market, it is also expanding its reach in commercial aspects as well.

The government had blocked Facebook for 22 days in late November and early December, which caused the number of mobile internet users to drop by around one million users.