So says a study examining online shopping habits of the U.S. population from e-commerce platform provider BigCommerce. Respondents ranked online shopping ahead of smartphone GPS and streaming media as a basic essential they could not live without.

While e-commerce favors younger generations, with millennials spending nearly half of their total budget online, all consumers are allocating a significant amount of their time and budget to online shopping. Sixty-seven percent of millennials and 56 percent of Gen X prefer to search and purchase on ecommerce sites rather than in-store; 41 percent of baby boomers and 28 percent of seniors prefer online to offline shopping. Millennials and Gen X spend 50 percent more time shopping online each week (six hours) than their older counterparts (four hours).

In addition, although they have greater proximity to physical stores, online shoppers in metropolitan areas spend more online annually ($853) than suburban shoppers ($768) or those in rural areas ($684). Men reported spending 28 percent more online than women during the past year. Eighty percent of online shoppers make online purchases at least once a month; 30 percent make a purchase at least once a week.

Results also showed a growing acceptance of social commerce. Thirty percent of online purchasers would make a purchase from a social media network. Respondents were most open to making a purchase on Facebook (20 percent), closely followed by Pinterest (17 percent), Instagram (14 percent), Twitter (12 percent) and Snapchat (10 percent). Males are more open (23 percent) than women (17 percent) to make a purchase through Facebook. More than half (51 percent) of millennials say they would be likely to buy through a social network.

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