Seven among 10 students in India accessing Internet primarily use it for sending e-mails while every second student uses it for course-related work too, according to a study conducted by Mudra Institute of communications institute.

The study, conducted in nine major cities across the country, found Yahoo! to be the most-often used search engine among the students, Prof. Pradip Krishnatray, who led the research among computer-using students in the age group of 19 to 26 years, said on Sunday.

The cities covered in the study were Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Indore, Mumbai, Nagpur and Pune, he said. Students use Internet primarily for sending and receiving emails (72 per cent), playing games (50 per cent), seeking information related to further education (50 per cent) and course-related works (45 per cent), the study said. They received and sent an average of five emails a week.

Yahoo! is the most-often used search engine among 80 per cent of respondents. Seven among 10 students said they used Hotmail while two among 10 used Yahoo’s web-based mail.

Of the different kinds of two-way communication facilities available through the Internet, email was ranked as the most used. Almost half of the respondents had a TCP/IP connection at home to access the Net. Cybercafes were ranked as the next most common source of accessing it, Prof Krishnatray said. About 40 per cent of the respondents neither listen to radio nor watch video. Almost half of them said TV watching had decreased since they began using computers.

Many respondents indicated decrease in time spent with family and friends, reading books, going for movies, listening to radio, talking on telephone, playing and shopping.

However, newspaper and magazines were the least affected. Instead, the time spent on them has shown a 10 per cent increase. Three among four students said they spend an hour daily reading newspaper and watched two movies a month.

About 40 per cent clicked on advertisements and 30 per cent found the advertisements on Internet interesting. A little less than half of the respondents said they would like to see more advertisements on the Net.

Nearly 45 per cent of the 336 students who participated in the study had a computer at home and an equal number had been using computers for less than two years. The study revealed those over 20 began using computers in their late teens while those under 20 started in early teens. Over 60 per cent of the respondents were males. Sixty five per cent were graduates and the rest were a professional graduate. Most came from socio-economic background with monthly household income was over Rs 10,000.

Students who did not have computers at home accessed it mainly from cybercafes, friends’ houses or college.

PTI