Which students spend the most time online?


Three in 10 Americans said they used social media because “it’s interesting.”

College students of every kind spend an inordinate amount of time on the internet, but engineering and technology students take the proverbial web-surfing cake.

It was students interested in technology and engineering who are most likely to spend more than five hours a day online, according to a recent survey, with 43 percent of engineering and technology students admitting to spending one-fifth on their day on the web.

Students interested in arts and humanities were least likely to spend more than five hours a day online, with only 17 percent of those students reporting high-volume internet surfing, according to “Students’ Online Usage: Global Trends Report,” conducted and published by QS World Grad School Tour.

The results were based on 918 respondents from 26 countries.

About one-fourth of social science students reported spending more than five hours online every day, according to the survey. Six percent of respondents said they used their smartphones as the primary tool for spending time online, while six in 10 said a laptop was their preferred web-searching device.

The survey also measured social media use across the 26 countries represented in the findings. Europeans, Americans, and Canadians were most likely to use Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks to “keep up to date,” while Latin American and African respondents were less likely to use social media for this reason.

To see how long students can go without checking their phones, read Page 2.

Three in 10 respondents from America and Canada and half of Latin American respondents  said they used social media because “it’s interesting.”

Nearly four in 10 college students said they could not go 10 minutes without checking one of their mobile devices, “about the same amount of time it takes to walk to class,” according to a study released last year by CourseSmart, a leading eTextbook company based in California.

 

Almost every one of the 500 college students surveyed – 98 percent – said they own a digital device, and many said the technology made more time for their busy schedules.

Eighty-five percent of respondents said their devices save time while studying – an average of two hours a day.

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