back to article Yoof survey: 'Internet as vital as air'

A third of college students and young professionals feel that the internet is as important as air, food, water or shelter, according to a new survey. Cisco's 2011 Connected World Technology Report (PDF) found that 32 per cent thought the web was as important as the necessities of life, while over half of students and 62 per …

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  1. TeeCee Gold badge
    Stop

    Anecdotal.

    We need real science.

    I suggest getting sizable sample of yer typical "yoof" and dividing them into two groups. The first will be placed in an evironment isolated from the internet, the second in an environment isolated from air.

    After a week, we check which group is doing better.

    In order to check that the results obtained are or are not "yoof" specific, I suggest that the isolation from air test is repeated with a control group of Cisco PR flacks.....

  2. Eponymous Cowherd
    WTF?

    So.....

    given the choice of having to give up one of air, food, water, shelter or t'Internet, these (33%) muppets are as likely to choose air as anything else.

    Either a really crap survey, or really stupid people.

  3. mraak

    Not air

    But certainly electricity. In fact if electricity goes down, the worst part about it is the lack of internet. My laptop can still work on battery for three hours but I can hardly do anything useful without the internet.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Priorities, people!

    You think the Internet is as important as air, huh? OK, I will shut your phone off for 10 minutes. Then I will shut off your breathing for 10 minutes. Let's see which endangers your life.

    Is the Internet important? Yes.

    As important as air or food? Please.

  5. Graham Marsden
    WTF?

    When I were a lad...

    *WHOOOP* *WHOOOP* *WHOOOP*

    FOUR YORKSHIREMEN SKETCH WARNING!

    *WHOOOP* *WHOOOP* *WHOOOP*

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      When I were a Lad,there were no tinternet it were all dial up to bulletin boards.. (from Shefield in South Yorks)

  6. disgruntled yank

    And?

    I trust that El Reg is not complaining about this.

  7. Geoff Thompson
    WTF?

    Out More

    They need to get out more. No doubt email is a very important business tool, and web access is very useful, but vital? Highly annoying when it isn't there, but hardly life or death. I will be off line for 48 hours tomorrow, in the wilds, and recently I was in Africa and manages web access twice in three weeks. The world continued to rotate, the sun shone and I ate and drank. Tweets were tweeted, FB pages were updated and my email inbox filled up slightly less quickly because the Outlook message told people I was away. If anything really important had happened I would have been contacted quite quickly via quite old technology. I love being connected, but I love escape too. The real world smells people. Try it.

  8. John Smith 3

    People think the web is essential. And you draw this conclusion from an online survey? Sample bias much?

  9. My Alter Ego
    Boffin

    Surely this should be put to the test.

    Hmm, guess I'm not the only person to thin so.

  10. James Micallef Silver badge
    Happy

    How long can you live without....

    Shelter - pretty much indefinitely if you're Rambo

    Food - a couple of weeks provided you drink enough water

    Water - approx 3 days

    Air - max 5 minutes even for ultimate free divers

    T' Interweb - can't drag yourself from it for more than a few seconds. Apparently

    Hold on, do these kids know what 'vital' means??

    1. Pete 2 Silver badge

      Term inflation

      > do these kids know what 'vital' means??

      I think these days you have to prefix a phrase with "literally" :) before anyone starts to take it seriously. Otherwise deduct at least two steps of urgency to get back to the real meaning. Thus:

      vital -> important -> convenient

      need -> want -> impulsive desire (that will soon fade)

      literally hate -> hate -> dislike

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Thumb Up

        Inflation Regress

        I don't think prefixing terms with 'literally' will help clear things up, given that plenty of people use 'literally' to mean anything but 'literally.'

        Either that, or common reports such as 'I literally died of embarrassment' and 'There were literally a billion people in the queue' point to an alarmingly insidious sociological problem.

        More reasonable to think putting web access on a par with air, water, food and shelter means that the lives of their respondents centre mainly around breathing, drinking, eating, sleeping and web surfing, which would represent a fair bit of the surveyed demographic.

  11. Charles Manning
    Flame

    "how they need to evolve in order to attract talent"

    So the really talented yoof are the ones who have a need to LOL on Facebook every 5 minutes.

    Riiight!

  12. Another Cowardlyman
    IT Angle

    So what? This is old news

    And email is a utility too!

    Just ask any Email admin/Engineer at any decent size company....

    Oh no! Email was down for 4 minutes! The world has just ended!

    Forced to reboot the Blackberry server? Takes 5 minutes, maybe...the IT manager paces and makes prayers....

    etc, etc.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      happens in small businesses too

      SBS 2003 on our system takes 15 minutes or so to shut down and about 5 to restart (I know but its not that healthly)

      its a beggar to get people to go with network access for 20 min.

  13. Electric Panda
    Pint

    Seeing as Internet usage is so widespread these days, and people rely so heavily on it, I'm starting to consider a home broadband connection of some kind just as important as other more obvious utilities. We live in a society where Internet access is assumed and taken for granted - you're always bombarded with TV and radio adverts saying "Visit us at...", "Check out our Facebook page", having to go online to find the best deal on your other utilities and car insurance etc.

    Of course, all of these things were possible before web access but web access makes it all so much easier. In case you're wondering about my age, I'm 24 and have had web access at home since late 1999 - my family were actually quite late starters in that regard and many of my friends had access as much as three years before that. I don't actually spend my entire life on Facebook and instant messaging like some of my generation do, but the net is vital for my work and I couldn't live without it.

  14. jake Silver badge

    Get off my lawn!

    Or maybe, get over here ... if you're not careful you might actually learn something.

    For two years, I lived with barely enough electricity to pump water for the house and gardens (veggies, not flowers), and an AM/FM cassette radio (when the pump wasn't running). For another year and a half after that, I had refrigeration as well. No Internet. For three and a half years. In the early-mid-1990s. I had dial-up telephone for communications, but I deliberately refused to access the 'net (or other so-called "normal" utilities) from home.

    In that time-frame, the only things I bought with cash were razor blades, bog roll, 12V light bulbs, gas/petrol and diesel, and the telephone service. All else I either grew or hunted or bartered for.

    Trust me, kids, TehIntraWebTubes[tm] are hardly necessary for life. People lived without "all mod cons" for hundreds of thousands of years before the advent of the bronze age ... And with the correct know-how, people still can.

    And no, there is no app for that. You have to get your fingernails dirty, and actually pay attention to the world around you instead of mindlessly groping your iFad ...

    Yes, I've often been called a neo-luddite. I'm cool with that.

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