Few university students reading newspapers online

Newspaper Research Journal, Spring 2002 by Bressers, Bonnie, Bergen, Lori

These students also spent time with other media in addition to television. They spent more than an hour on average each day listening to the radio, listening to music from a tape or a CD and reading a book.

Activities that consumed less than one hour on average each day included 54 minutes on the Internet for non-email activities and 38 minutes with email.

Internet Uses

We know that students in our sample spent an average of 92 minutes with either the Internet or email. But what were they doing? We asked respondents to indicate how frequently they used the Internet for a variety of functions. Mean scores on a 4-point scale (where 4 = frequently, 3 = occasionally, 2 = rarely and 1 = never) were highest for the following functions: use of an e-mail account (x = 3.6), a search for information (x = 3.5) and reference or research material (x = 3.4). Indeed, 81.6 percent of the sample reported frequently using their e-mail account, 61 percent frequently searching for general information and 47.9 percent use the Internet frequently for reference or research materials that might be associated with a research or class project.

Students were less likely to report frequent use of the Internet for functions like a job search (x = 2.0), shopping (x = 1.7), chat or personals (x = 1.7) or games (x = 1.6). Nearly one half or more reported they never used the Internet for a job search (46.7 percent), shopping (56.3 percent), chat or personals, (63.2 percent) or games (66.3 percent).

We also asked about topics for which students might seek information on the Internet - ranging from education (x = 2.8) to adult content (x = 1.4). Although we suspect that respondents may have misunderstood our query about "education" as a topic, responding instead to "education" as a function, we note that news and media were near the top in terms of frequency (x = 2.6). However, respondents searched less frequently for information on topics traditionally found in conventional and online newspapers. These included (in descending order): entertainment (x = 2.4), recreation and sports (x = 2.4), weather (x = 2.3), travel (x = 2.3), computing and technology (x = 2.0), politics and government (x = 1.8), health and fitness (x = 1.8), personal finance and stocks (x = 1.6), family and children (x = 1.4) and religion (x = 1.4).

Nearly half or more of respondents said they never seek information on the Internet for such topics as computing and technology (46.9 percent), politics and government (52.6 percent), health and fitness (53.4 percent), personal finance and stocks (64.4 percent), family and children (69.1 percent), religion (74.2 percent) and adult content (74.4 percent). The placement of these topics might be considered an indicator of their importance (or unimportance) to college-age students, or in some cases, we assume some response bias due to the telephone collection of data and the nature of the topics (especially adult content and possibly religion).

Internet Uses by Gender

Gender differences were explored further by considering the functions for which males and females use the Internet. Males and females demonstrated no statistically significant difference in their use of the Internet for e-mail, searching for general information, research for a class or project, job searches or shopping.