Young people “couldn’t live” without the internet

A new survey of young people has found that three-quarters of them feel they “couldn’t live” without the internet.

The report, which was unveiled by the online charity YouthNet at the Houses of Parliament earlier this week, surveyed a group of 16 to 24 year olds of which 75% said they couldn’t live without the web.

Despite recent high-profile cases of internet security breaches, such as phishing email scams, the majority of the group (76%) also think the internet is safe “as long as you know what you’re doing”.

The survey, funded by the Nominet Trust, was set up to look at how the web influences the well-being of young people who are seen as “digital natives” – as they have grown up with computers and mobile technology.

Professor Michael Hulme, author of the report, said: “For young people the internet is part of the fabric of their world and does not exist in isolation from the physical world.”

However, the report also revealed that young people don’t use the internet to look for news.

Charlie McDonnell, a 19 year old video blogger on YouTube – with 200,000 subscribers and over 20 million hits – was used as an example of how sophisticated young users are.

“I never really look for news, I find out about stuff that interests me from blogs,” he said.  “I use them as a filter to find news that I find interesting.”

Although McDonnell doesn’t rate the micro-blogging site Twitter – “it’s just one person saying they saw something on one website… but it’s good for getting information straight away,” he said.