Citizen Perceptions of The European Union: The Impact of the EU W ...

to determine the importance of other media for the individual use, there is enough evidence that television or newspapers are no longer the sole source for obtaining information about the EU, which is especially true for the younger generations of Europeans.

1.3.2. Young People Versus the Rest

Following the previous section, young people played an essential role in this study—for three main reasons. First of all, they use the Internet far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than the general population. Second, their attitudes, opinions, and interaction with EU institutions are decisive for the future development of the EU. As Miller (2001) put it, young people are the shapers of tomorrow's society. The third reason for studying this group of users, as briefly mentioned in the preface, stemmed from the wish to include ‘expert’ Internet users, so as to limit the problem of skills as much as possible in order to then be able to focus on the problems within the search process and the interactions on the Web site. Of course, not all of the participants were real experts, or would rate themselves as such, but the key difference from other generations was that those aged 16 years at the time of the study grew up with computers and the Internet and learned to handle them not so much as a separate technology but as a natural part of everyday life (Livingstone, 2006).

With regard to the specific patterns of Internet use, the usual Internet statistics within the EB surveys did not include children younger than 15 and, furthermore, did not usually look at the 15–24 age group in great detail; thus, more specific data on young people's Internet use are needed.¹⁰ As can be seen in figure 1, the findings underlined this development and even showed that it was just as pronounced among even younger age groups.

While this figure merely shows children's Internet use as reported by their parents, the data showed that those aged 12–13 were more likely to use the Internet than the generation ahead of them (those aged 18–24). And even for children as young as 8, one parent in two declared that their child used the Internet. For now, however, those aged 16–17, together with university students, displayed the highest amount and frequency of