Dhaka: Most internet users in Bangladesh and India avail themselves of the internet facility for searching jobs, according to a survey conducted by Washington-based Pew Research Center.

The majorities of internet users in Bangladesh ­(62 percent) and India (55 percent) say they have looked for a job online in the past year, the highest rates among the 31 countries surveyed that have enough internet users to analyse.

Very few people in India and Bangladesh use the internet - only 20 percent and 11 percent respectively. ‘But among those who do, job searching is a popular activity.’

The Pew Research Center surveyed thousands of people across 32 emerging and developing nations about their technology use and how the rising influence of the internet affects their daily lives.

The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other data-driven social science research.

Many people worldwide are skipping the fixed telephone line that many Americans grew up with, and this fact is most apparent in many emerging and developing nations.

Only 1 percent of the population in Nigeria, Ghana, Bangladesh and Uganda say they own a working landline telephone in their household, while 89 percent in Nigeria, 83 percent in Ghana, 76 percent in Bangladesh and 65 percent in Uganda own cell phones. This compareswith 60 percent landline penetration in the USA.

Chinese internet users love to shop as about half of online Chinese (52 percent) have used the internet to buy products in the past 12 months.

Given the size of the online Chinese marketplace, this goes a long way in explaining the meteoric rise of commerce giants such as Alibaba and Baidu.

Among Lebanese who use social networks, an astounding three quarters of them say they use the platform for discussing politics.

Similar levels of political participation occur among social network users in Egypt (66 percent) and Jordan (63 percent).

Across all the countries surveyed with sufficient numbers, only a median of 34 percent say they talk politics using social media, including 16 percent of Filipino and Vietnamese social networkers and 19 percent of Indonesians.