Young Quebec adults are getting more and more information via the Internet

We already suspected it, but a CEFRIO study confirms the trend: young adults (18-24 years) do not have the same sources of information as older people and use the Internet more than any other segment of the population. age. At the same time, this confirms the school's need to adapt to this reality.

Last November, the Research center promoting research and innovation in organizations using information and communication technologies (CEFRIO) released the results of a portion of the 2013 NETendances survey on the use of different sources of information used to consult news and current affairs by adults in Quebec. Some results confirm widespread impressions, while others are more surprising.

Contrary to what many people may think, the results indicate that television remains an important source of information for checking current affairs and news. About 4 in 5 Quebec adults would use this medium for this purpose. However, the impression that young people are more inclined to use the Internet for information on current events seems to be confirmed by the results of the survey.

Age is therefore an important variable likely to modify the behaviors and practices of adults in Quebec with regard to the media used for information. In the report, we can read that “[a] while in Quebec's adult population, television largely dominates the news and news landscape, its use is more relative among young people aged 18 to 24, who also consult the Internet extensively as their main source ”. All things considered, adults in this age group are also the least likely to use the radio for information.

Sites specializing in news and current affairs would remain the most used by Internet users for information. On the other hand, significant differences were observed according to the age groups. For example, the report indicates that social networks are used for information by young people aged 18 to 24, while their use among those 45 and over is described as marginal.

Among the other variables identified by CEFRIO as likely to influence the means by which Quebec adults obtain information, there is in particular education and mother tongue.

Entitled Internet as a source of information in Quebec and being part of the NETendances 2013 survey, the full report is available on the CEFRIO website.