Internet Applications - 2: Internet Usage Behaviour of Key Groups

This section analyzes the internet usage behaviour of a few key groups:

These groups account for 74% of total netizens.

 

		Primary and Middle School Students	University Students	Office Workers	Migrant Workers	General
Online Media	Online News	68.1%	89.9%	83.1%	73.4%	78.5%
Information Search	Search Engines	63.5%	84.4%	71.9%	56.6%	68.0%
	Job-search	8.9%	29.5%	23.0%	23.7%	18.6%
Online Communications	E-mail	52.2%	81.4%	60.4%	38.9%	56.8%
	Instant Messaging	77.5%	91.1%	75.0%	66.5%	75.3%
Online Community	Own a Blog	64.0%	81.4%	50.9%	43.1%	54.3%
	Forum/BBS	24.1%	55.5%	34.6%	17.2%	30.7%
	Friend-finding Websites	16.8%	26.0%	20.2%	18.2%	19.3%
Online Entertainment	Online Music	86.9%	94.0%	83.4%	78.2%	83.7%
	Online Video	67.4%	84.4%	68.1%	57.3%	67.7%
	Online Games	69.7%	64.2%	60.6%	55.5%	62.8%
E-Business	Online Shopping	16.2%	38.8%	29.4%	11.7%	24.8%
	Online Sales	2.1%	5.2%	4.4%	0.8%	3.7%
	Online Payment	9.6%	30.5%	22.4%	7.9%	17.6%
	Travel Booking	2.0%	6.8%	6.8%	2.5%	5.6%
Other	Online Banking	7.7%	29.9%	25.5%	7.4%	19.3%
	Online Trading	4.7%	4.7%	15.5%	4.1%	11.4%
	Online Education	16.2%	25.6%	17.3%	7.8%	16.5%

 

 

Primary and middle school students are not savvy users of internet applications. The only applications they use more than average are instant messaging, blogging, online music and online video. Members of this age group have the same basic psychological demands for fun and curiosity. Their use of online education is about average.  Except for receiving education from school, the internet acts as a supplementary study source for them. This is an important application for them.

 

 

University students are the most active group. Of the 18 applications in the survey, their use of all applications except for online trading was higher than average. They are extremely active on blogs and forums.  The active and curious nature of young people as well as the unlimited possibilities of the internet work to push forward internet use in this group. 80.3% of university students updated their blogs within the past half-year.

 

 

The activity level of office workers is second only to that of university students. They make use of online trading applications more than university students do, but their usage of other applications is lower than that of university students.

 

 

Migrant workers are the least active of the key groups. Their usage of all applications is below average, especially with regards to e-business and online finance.

 

When analyzing the overall number of applications used and time spent online by key groups, two interesting “tradeoffs” were realized: university students used the most applications, but the time they spent online was less than that of office workers; although migrant workers internet usage behaviour was the simplest, the time they spent online was greater than that of primary and middle school students.

 

This pattern of netizen activity may be attributed to the following factors. University students are active and curious, they try each application, but due to academic restrictions, most of their time must still be spent on their courses.  Thus, they use a large number of applications but the amount of time they spend online is still less than that of office workers. Also, many office workers can go online while they are at work or even must go online as part of their job. However, their online behaviour has already matured and they are set on using several common applications. Primary and middle school students are under the guardianship of family and teachers so they cannot surf the internet for long periods of time whenever they want.  However, curiosity still drives them to try new internet applications. On the other hand, what migrant workers do with their spare time is not determined by others so they can spend relatively longer online.

 

Of course, the amount of leisure time and work (study) characteristics determine that the time spent online and number of applications used by primary and middle school students cannot be greater than that of university students. Similarly, the time spent online and number of applications used by migrant workers cannot be greater than that of office workers.