For those still getting their heads around Gmail, it may come as quite a shock to learn that email is now 40 years old. The now somewhat aged electronic mail system celebrates its birthday alongside web founder Tim Berners-Lee. 

Unfortunately the first email ever sent was nowhere near as exciting as you might expect. The message simply read "QUERTYUIOP" and was sent between a pair of computers sitting side by side in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Things have come a long way since then, with Sky Broadband research pointing to 91 per cent of British people owning an email account. 

Email appears to have replaced the way in which we would traditionally communicate. 51 per cent of workers would rather send an email than pick up the phone with close to half the population not sending a hand-written letter in over 6 months.

Sky Broadband research has also revealed Britain to be a nation of internet addicts, averaging a massive 4.5 hours of surfing per day. Admittedly most of that statistic may be work related, but we would like to know how many hours people average checking out Facebook. I'm sure many of us manage shameful numbers of hours on the social networking site which now has over 500 million active users.

Internet obsessed? Or do you still prefer to send telegrams? We want to know...