Students live life online

Three quarters of students spend at least 2-3 hours online each day, a new report from YouGov has revealed.

The report produced in conjunction with studentbeans.com showed that 15% of students say they spend over 5 hours online each day, excluding time spend studying.

It also shows students moving away from traditional viewing habits, with them fully embracing online television.

81% of full time students who have internet access use it to watch TV, compared to a national average of 30% of British adults online.
Of those students who watch TV online, BBC iPlayer is the most popular choice (52%), followed by 4oD (25%), whilst YouTube accounts for 13% of student viewing online.

Almost three quarters of respondents (71%) watch up to two hours of television online every day, whilst 22% spend over two hours catching up with TV programmes online.

Commenting on the findings within the report Research Director for YouGov SixthSense, James McCoy said, "It is to be expected that young people, and students in particular, are more tech savvy than the average person. Saying that, I don't think anyone could have predicted such a discrepancy to exist between the number of students watching TV online and the average across all groups."

Online radio, however, has not had the same take up rate as online television. 40% of students do not listen to live radio via a traditional analogue radio or a DAB radio, while 62% of students say they don't listen to the radio online.

Speaking on the low use of online radio amongst students, McCoy said, "This could be partly explained by the growth of streaming services such as Spotify and we7 both of which have several million users in the UK."