There was a time - before Google, Facebook.com or Youtube.com - when students did research from library books, scribbled letters to their friends and wrote essays on their typewriters.
But for today's Jumbos, this kind of lifestyle is difficult to imagine. New studies and statistics show that college students are digitally leading the way as Americans' lives become increasingly reliant on - and even centered around - the time they spend online.
According to a recent survey by Burst Media, college students are logging on more than anybody else. Of those surveyed, 30 percent reported using the Internet more than 10 hours per week, and 20.3 percent report logging on for more than 20 hours.
As a result of students' frequent use, the Internet has saturated their lives in a wide variety of areas. A survey by CollegeGrad.com recently found that students use the Internet more than any other source when searching for information on entry-level jobs.
Of the students surveyed, 55 percent said the Web was their most important source of job information. In comparison, job fairs and career centers were preferred by 14.8 and 13.6 percent of students, respectively.
"If I'm looking for a job, the first place I go is the Career Services Web site," senior Susan Linn said.
"[The Internet is] pretty essential. It's so much easier to just have it online than to have to go to the library all the time or having to call people for jobs or whatever," sophomore Eleaonora Kinnicut said. "Everyone checks e-mail so much now that you just depend on it so heavily."
Freshman Dan Ebin uses the Internet as his news source: "[The Internet is] pretty important for me to get news," Ebin said, adding that he doesn't read newspapers. "I don't have a TV in my room, so that's my main source of news."
For some students, the ease and efficiency the Internet offers have made it something they simply can't live without.
"When I can't get online, I feel like I'm just not connected," sophomore Lena Chaihorsky said. "It's crucial."
The statistics suggest that the Internet is growing as an essential part - and focus - of college life.
"Usually five or six times per day I go online. Probably once or twice is for a longer period of time, and three or four times I just check my e-mail," Kinnicut said.
Kinnicut is not unique. A survey released this summer by the media firm "Born to be Wired" reported that Americans between 13-24 years old spend an average of 16.7 hours on the Internet each week, excluding time spent checking e-mail. According to the survey, that's slightly more time than they spend watching television and significantly more time than they spend talking on the phone and reading combined.
"I spend probably an hour and a half to two hours per day on the Internet," Linn said, adding that it was "definitely essential" to her life. "I do e-mail, research for class, AIM - you know, the usual. Whenever the Internet's down or anything I feel disconnected from the world."
Kinnicut agreed. "I use it for everything," she said. "When I have research papers I go on the library Web site and look up the extended academic research."
Chaihorsky too felt that easy and efficient Internet access is a necessity, not a luxury.
"In order to stay connected with my classes every day I have to be online every day," she said. "I didn't have a laptop with me my first week of school, and I seriously didn't know what to do with myself. I felt like this massive amount of information about classes, about school, about Tufts, was just passing me by every day and I couldn't get access to it."
The importance of the Internet has increased for students drastically in recent years, as has Internet usage nationwide. According to InternetWorldStats.com, a research Web site devoted to monitoring and estimating Web traffic worldwide, 210,080,067 Americans now use the Internet, which is 69.6 percent of the population as of Nov., 2006. In Aug. of 2000, that number was 124 million, which was 44.1 percent of the population at that time.
"Because of the Internet, I can now not go to Dowling, get my major changing form, e-mail the people I need to speak to without going to their offices, and basically just save hours of time," sophomore Isaac Emmanuel said, looking up from his computer screen. "I was just answering my e-mail, and I was just about to look up the culture requirements to see how my Arabic class will count."
"Every time I go in my room I at least check something on my computer," he added.
