Embedding the Internet in the Lives of College Students

The Internet is increasingly becoming embedded in the lives of most American citizens. College students constitute a group who have made particularly heavy use of the technology for everything from downloading music to distance education to instant messaging. Researchers know a lot about the uses made of the Internet by this group of people but less about the relationship between their offline activities and online behavior. This study reports the results of a web survey of a group of university undergraduates exploring the nature of both online and offline in five areas—the use of news and information, the discussion of politics, the seeking of health information, the use of blogs, and the downloading of media and software.