Online Public Attitudes - 2006 Annual Report

What do we know about the attitudes toward the Web as a news and informational source for the young, who are among the Web’s heaviest users?

In 2005, we learned that many young people consider the Internet to be a learning tool. According to data from the Carnegie Corporation of New York , 41% of Americans 18 to 34 say the Internet is the most useful way to learn, compared with 15% for local television, which ranked second.10

There may be some evidence that young people view online news as slightly more trustworthy than older generations do. The Carnegie Corporation found that “being trustworthy” was considered a very critical reason why young people prefer the Web for news to other media platforms.11

There also appears to be a generation gap on the question of blog credibility. A survey by Hostaway.com, a Web hosting company with offices in Chicago, Tampa and Vancouver, found that Americans under 30 were much more likely than their older counterparts to consider blogs credible sources of information. In fact, blogs were found to be just as credible as traditional media among this age group.12 That is not surprising when we consider that blog use is considerably higher among younger Americans than among older ones.