Collegiate report shows decline in print media, increase in online use

USC Annenberg’s Center for the Digital Future will be releasing their annual report this month, which shows a decline in print media use.

The 2010 Digital Future Report contains a great deal of information about how the world is currently using the Internet, but it also shows the drastic declining state of print media. According to the report, 82 percent of Americans are now using the Internet on a regular basis. Users are still finding it difficult to adopt new forms of media though.

“Although new media is used by large percentages of Internet users age 24 and under, overall large percentages of Internet users never go online to do instant messaging (50 percent), work on a blog (79 percent), participate in chat rooms (80 percent), or make or receive phone calls (85 percent),” as stated in the report.

Of the 82 percent of Americans using the Internet, only 56 percent of them still consider newspaper to be important. However, they do still feel that they are more trustworthy. “Only 56 percent of Internet users ranked newspapers as important or very important sources of information for them – a decrease from 60 percent in 2008 and below the Internet (78 percent), and television (68 percent).”

Additionally, people who used to get entertainment information from newspapers feel that they are no longer necessary. “Even lower are the percentages of users who consider newspapers important as sources of entertainment for them, now considered important by 29 percent of Internet users, and down from 32 percent in 2008 – also last among principal media.”

When asked if current subscribers of a newspaper would switch to the online edition or search for alternative print editions, only 37 percent said they would continue with print.

As technology becomes more mainstream and older generations of Internet users begin to adopt them, the importance of print newspapers will continue to decline further.

Even though the report shows a steady decline in the subscription to newspapers, the level of credibility and trust for Internet sources also continue to decline. “Sixty-one percent of users said that only half or less of online information is reliable — a new low level for the Digital Future Project,” as stated in the report. “Even more disturbing is that 14 percent of Internet users said that only a small portion or none of the information online is reliable – a percentage that has grown for the past three years and is now at the highest level thus far in the Digital Future Project.”

Internet Use

Twitter is in the news just as Myspace was during it’s prime, but the same annual report showed that not a single person would pay for it. According to the report, zero percent of users would pay for it, however in comparing to similar polled results, social media site Reddit has already taken in over 10,000 donations from their users.

The annual study of the impact of the Internet on Americans by the Center for the Digital Future found that 49 percent of Internet users said they have used free micro-blogs such as Twitter.

But when asked if they would be willing to pay for Twitter, zero percent said yes.

“Such an extreme finding that produced a zero response underscores the difficulty of getting Internet users to pay for anything that they already receive for free,” said Jeffrey I. Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

What do you think?

Do you feel these statistics are accurate? Would you pay for Twitter or Facebook if they required a monthly or yearly subscription fee? Tell us in the comments or take our poll. We will report the results later in the week.

[Highlights of 2010 report][USC Future Report]