A study on how university students in Durban, KZN, use the Internet during their spare time.

Abstract

Various studies have been conducted around the world on students and Internet

usage. These studies have been conducted on students of different age groups,

from entry level, up to and including students at colleges and universities. In

view of studies conducted elsewhere, the researcher was keen to investigate

how local students, from Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, used the Internet

during their spare time.

The study was a qualitative study based on the experiences of a few students

who were chosen as participants using snowball sampling. The data was

produced using interviews and a mini survey. Data was analysed by generating

themes which emerged.

The research findings indicated that students do use the Internet occasionally for

educational purposes, such as research or communication with their lecturers.

However, the responses revealed that they used the Internet mainly as a leisure

activity. Common activities included social networking, e-mail, network games

and downloading music.

A disturbing find was that students had little or no knowledge regarding the legal

and ethical use of the Internet. Similarly, students had minimal knowledge of

netiquette. Due to the above findings, a sample Internet usage policy, a sample agreement,

as well as guidelines for Internet usage (including netiquette) has been compiled

as part of the recommendations for education managers to adopt in order to

promote a healthy and safe culture of Internet use at their respective institutions.