Teens spur Israel's growing connection to the Internet

Israelis' overall use and time spent by students on Internet both up.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
internet logo 88 (photo credit: )
internet logo 88
(photo credit: )
Teenagers are spending 25 percent more of their time surfing the Internet - an average of six hours and 22 minutes a week - today than they did in 2004, at the expense of their consumption of other media and their free time. But youngsters aren't the only ones sitting in front of their computers for lengthy periods. Israel ranked second only to Canada in the average amount of hours spent on-line, a comScore Networks poll has reported. Canadian surfers spend 39.6 hours a month on-line while Israeli web users are a close second at 37.4 hours/month. South Korea came in third with 34 hours/month followed by the US (31.6), the UK (31.2), Chile (30.9), Brazil (30.2), Finland (28.7), Spain (27.9) and Sweden (27.5). In each of the top 10 countries, the time spent on-line by users with a broadband connection was substantially greater than the time spent by users with a narrowband connection. According to comScore Networks, 747 million people, age 15 plus, used the Internet worldwide in January 2007, a 10 percent increase versus January 2006. Among the top 15 countries (ranked by penetration), Internet audiences in India, the Russian Federation and China increased the most in 2006, growing 33%, 21% and 20%, respectively. China now represents the second-largest Internet population in the world, with 86.8 million users, after the US, which rose 2% year-over-year to 153.4 million users age 15 or older in January 2007. "The importance of the worldwide Internet population continues to grow,' said Bob Ivins, managing director, comScore Europe. "Internet users outside the US now account for 80 percent of the world's on-line population, with rapidly developing countries experiencing double-digit growth rates year-over-year." Meanwhile, the latest TGI survey published on Wednesday showed that the amount of time per day that Israeli children aged 12 to 17 spend on reading newspapers has remained steady at 18 minutes. They invest 30 minutes a week reading magazines, compared to 26 minutes in 2006 and two hours and 20 minutes a day on TV, about the same as a year ago. Fifty-three minutes a day, on average, are devoted to listening to the radio, while the use of mobile music and video devices (MP3 and MP4) has risen from 16% in 2004 to 60% of young people today. Teenagers today and in 2004, according to the survey, regarded abuse of children and drug taking as "very worrisome." Teenagers are less worried about terror today and more concerned about nuclear weapons (in Iran) and nuclear war. The educational system worries 44% today compared to 41% three years ago. However, only 37% said they were afraid of unemployment after graduation and the army compared to 45% in 2004. Worry about the environment is relatively small among young people despite media coverage of the issue, with only a third worried about pollution and 24% about global warming and holes in the ozone layer of the atmosphere. Their mothers are the figure that 63% said they admired most, and only 5.5% admired an Israeli political figure in Israel and 1.8% named a foreign politician. The survey, conducted by Single Source Research for TGI, is used as a tool for marketing managers to make decisions on sales and product promotion to young people. It is based on a representative sample of thousands of young people.