New Generation Prefers Internet To Dating

By Margarita Nahapetyan

It turns out that Internet has become a basic need, ranking as important as air, water, food and shelter for one in three college students and young professionals who took part in the latest global survey by leading communications and collaboration networking giant Cisco.

The new survey is based on the second annual Cisco Connected World Technology Report that analyzes the connection between human behavior, the Internet and networking prevalence in fourteen countries all across the world, including India, China, Japan, Australia, Brazil, United States of America, United Kingdom, France, Mexico and Russia. The report, divided into two sections, 'The Internet' and 'Social Media', quizzed 1,441 students and 1,412 young working professionals, aged between 21 and 29 years, on a variety of parameters to figure out what about the social media made them that obsessed.

It was revealed that more than fifty per cent of the study respondents (55 per cent of college students and 62 per cent of the employees) think of Internet as an “integral part of their lives,” in some cases more integral than their vehicles, dating, listening to music and partying with friends. In addition, within some countries, updating Facebook was ranked as the highest priority when compared to socializing in person.

Approximately 91 per cent of college students and 88 per cent of young employees reported having Facebook account. Around 43 per cent of young respondents confessed that they have been checking social media updates at least 3 to 5 times per hour. As to employees, they also admitted to checking their Facebook pages at least several times every day, and every fourth person said that their page was “always up”.

The other surprising finding is that two-thirds of the survey participants - 58 per cent - thought that a mobile device (laptop, smartphone, iPad or a tablet) was the most important technology device in their lives. When it came to the importance of mobile device usage in their everyday lives, 71 per cent of respondents in India answered in the affirmative, behind the United Kingdom (74 per cent) and ahead of Australia (66 per cent), China (62 per cent) and the United States of America (62 per cent).

While Facebook turned out to be the most popular, micro-blogging, like Twitter, was found to be much less interesting for young generation. When asked, 45 per cent of those who took part in the survey answered that they did not use Twitter or any other micro-blogs, and even those who happened to use it, did so very rarely. Of employees who used Twitter, more than 68 per cent reported to follow the Twitter activity of either their manager or colleagues; 42 per cent said that they followed both, while 32 per cent would like to keep their personal lives private.

According to the new findings the prominence of television is gradually decreasing among college students and young employees in preference of mobile devices. Globally, less than one in every ten college students - 6 per cent - and employees - 8 per cent - reported that television is the most important technology device in their everyday lives. However, as TV programming and movies become increasingly available on mobile devices, the need for TV is expected to decrease even more.

The survey found that only for one in every 25 college students and employees (4 per cent) surveyed the newspaper was the most important source for accessing information. And as to books, one in every 5 students (21 per cent) have not bought a physical book in a bookstore in the past two years, or never at all.