Teenagers Not Among Cyber Cafe Regulars

Contrary to the popular belief, Internet usage at cyber cafes is yet to catch the fancy of teenagers. This was revealed by a study on mushrooming cyber cafes in the country by IT market research and consulting firm, IDC India Ltd.

The study was conducted over five cities--the four metros and Bangalore.

The study reveals that the average monthly spending by users at cyber cafes is one-third of their total spending on infotainment. The total expenditure on infotainment includes that on various media such as television, newspapers, magazines, recorded music and cyber cafes.

Majority of cyber cafe users fall between 19 to 25 years, and the next most frequent users are aged between 26 and 35 years. Together, these groups comprised mainly college students, businessmen and executives.

 

The profile of the 645 visitors covered across 30 cyber cafes in the five cities shows that the visitors were generally from affluent backgrounds, according to the survey.

Among the activities at cyber cafes, e-mailing and chat were overwhelmingly popular, with 53 per cent and 23 per cent shares, respectively.

The survey reveals that although 70 per cent of the cafe visitors indicated that they were aware of Internet commerce, only 7 per cent actually made any purchase over the Net.

The most popular items of purchase over the Internet are CDs and books, the survey says.

The average time for Internet surfing was 1.2 hours, the average being highest in Delhi (1.7 hours) and the lowest in Bangalore (0.8 hours).