Facebook more important than dating, say Indian youth

According to The Cisco Connected World Technology Report, the majority of Indian youth surveyed said that “keeping up to date on Facebook is more important on a typical day than dating, spending time with friends, listening to music, or going to a party.” If that’s bizarre, other social media habits of youth on the Internet on India surprise. Roughly 7 in 10 Young Professionals indicate that they have ‘friended’ or follow their manager and/or co-workers on Facebook/Twitter. Relative to other countries, significantly large proportions of Young Professionals in Mexico, India, Brazil, Spain, and China who use Facebook/Twitter follow or have ‘friended’ both their manager and work colleagues on the site,” the report adds. Youth (not just in India) seem to have slightly questionable priorities. “Roughly half of Students (49 percent) and End Users (47 percent) consider the Internet to be ‘close’ in importance to water, food, air, and shelter in their lives; and one-third of respondents in each subgroup consider the Internet to be as important as these critical needs,” says the CISCO report. [caption id=“attachment_90946” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces Timeline as he delivers a keynote address during the Facebook f8 conference. Getty”]  [/caption] What will be of concern to newspaper and magazine owners is how those surveyed consume news. In India, says the survey, 35 percent of college students say that the laptop is the primary source, 15 percent get their news fix from the desktop, 17 percent from TV, 10 percent from smartphones – and just 2 percent from newspapers and magazines. In the case of employees, newspapers are doing better – but just about. Forty percent get their news from their laptops, 14 percent from the desktop, 16 percent from TV, 13 percent from smartphones and 18 percent from newspapers and magazines. Only 2 percent of Indian respondents do not have a Facebook page; for 12 percent, Facebook is ‘always up’; 37 percent visit Facebook a few times each day; 23 percent visit it once a day. You can access the entire study here. Before votaries of digital and social media get all excited, it’s important that one has a look at the sample. The study is an extrapolation of responses from 200 individuals in India to an online questionnaire. Details of the respondent profile is part of the study.