Internet – the big winner among youths

published on 10/26/09 3:12 PM

The global web has gradually become the favorite source of information of young people mostly. Lecturers and students from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” have recently conducted a survey of tendencies among young Bulgarians age 18 – 30. The results from the survey were summarized and published in a book entitled “New youth and new media”. The project was carried out with the support of Open Society.

“Youths watch TV less and less nowadays. This is a clear-cut tendency,” says Ass. Prof. Orlin Spasov, head of Radio and Television department at Journalism Faculty in Sofia University. “Here we have to make a remark because that some TV channels such as Discovery, Animal Planet, MTV and others have very high ratings. The information search is done mainly through Internet sites, which are still limited. It was surprising for us to find out that most of the young people learn novelties not from the Internet but from other people. It turns out there is a certain revival of rumors, of information handed down from one to another. Something typical is when young people hear something interesting, they then go online to search for details.”

The dynamic way of life of young people and the wealth of information offered by Internet define the way they deal with it. In this respect the young generation is radically different from that of their parents.

“Elder generations are used to reading articles in newspapers and to watching TV programs from beginning to end,” Ass. Prof. Spasov explains. “In comparison, young people do not want to read long texts. What they read, provided they surf to news sites, are the titles. This way of dealing with information is influenced by the Internet which provides everything in a synthesized manner. Of course, such way of supplying information may be misleading because it creates the illusion of being well-informed when you read only the titles. Here, once again, we bump into the ambiguous role of Internet which creating the impression of being informed while at the same time one is misinformed. When one knows that one has constant access to news and information, one usually postpones the moment of getting oneself informed. As a result, one remains misinformed. This is one of the paradoxes of the abundance of information.”

According to Ass. Prof. Spasov, the most significant victim of Internet is classical literature. Young people ever more rarely reach out to it. Internet promotes genres such as science fiction and fantasy.

“The huge interest in science fiction and fantasy owes to the fact that large groups of fans of these two genres maintain online forums,” says Ass. Prof. Spasov. “Young people often comment such books in these forums. Internet has already changed attitude to reading as a whole. Nowadays people read specific things that interest them rather than for general knowledge. Hence, reading has become very pragmatic. I couldn’t say that young people read less. They read a lot, that’s Internet after all. However, reading online is not like the kind of reading former generations are accustomed to. We also have to mention the fact that Internet promotes writing. Young people nowadays are much more active writers. A recent survey has shown that on average, a student writes about 600 pages of emails per semester,” says Ass. Prof. Spasov.

English version: Delian Zahariev

По публикацията работи: Rumyana Tsvetkova

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