Youth spend 80 mins a day in internet adda
Chatting on the social media is a popular pastime among today's younger generation and as a result, their reading habit is shrinking alarmingly, suggests a Prothom Alo survey.
The youth chat with friends and dear ones for around 80 minutes a day on average. It is almost like adda (rendezvous), but in the virtual world.
However, according to the Prothom Alo Youth Survey-2017, chatting is not the most popular activity among the youth. It is in fact their fifth most favourite pastime on social media sites.
More than 40 per cent (41 per cent) of youth of the country pass leisure time by chatting, found the survey conducted by Org-Quest Research Ltd, among 1200 people aged between 15 and 30 years last March.
It revealed that almost all (99.4 per cent) of the youth, who have access to internet facilities, chat on social media.
The trend of chatting with near and dear ones is more among the urban youth (54 per cent) than their rural counterparts (36 per cent).
Besides, the number of male respondents, who chat on internet, is more (60 per cent) than the number of female (23 per cent).
The study also said more than half of the youth from Dhaka chat on internet whereas the rate is one third in other divisions.
Students tend to chat more than those who have completed their academic life. Students also chat more than the youth who are professionals, the survey report said.
However, the habit of chatting radically falls after marriage. The younger the youth is, the more s/he is attracted to chatting.
Among the job holders, those who work in the private sector chat more than the government employees.
A Royal Economic Society research said that chatting habit decreases the youth’s satisfaction about their life. This also affects their personal, familial and social lives negatively.
Internet eating up reading time
The youth’s time of studying is also lessening for they spend more time on the internet, especially social media sites, the study said.
The habit of reading is limited to classroom-based study. The youth are spending very little time for reading outside the classroom.
The survey report said the younger generation gives only 39 minutes on an average to study outside the classroom. Among the respondents, 56 per cent read for nearly 30 minutes. One out of four spends 30 minutes to one hour in studying.
The survey further revealed that 12 per cent do not read at all outside the classroom.
About this, IT expert Fahim Masrur said, “It is not that that today’s youth do not study. The time they spend on facebook and the amount of information they read is enough to read a large book. But the problem is they study sporadically.”
The survey found that the youth are dissatisfied with the overall quality of education in the country.
As high as 84 per cent youth expressed their dissatisfaction about it. Of them, 39 per cent said they are “very anxious” with the state of education. Only 3.4 per cent are not worried about it while 2 per cent have no idea about quality of education.