Sep 25, 2008 - 09:19 AM

Chris Sorensen, Torstar news services

Techno-savvy Canadians are spending an increasing amount of their time online, but not necessarily at the expense of watching television, reading newspapers or other forms of so-called "traditional media."

That was among the findings of a wide-ranging survey on Internet usage in Canada released yesterday by the Canadian Internet Project, a research consortium funded by both government and private sector partners.

While the study found that Canadians are increasingly living in a Web-centric world, it failed to find a link between a 10 per cent decline in people's consumption of traditional media sources – namely television – between 2007 and 2004 and a simultaneous 30 per cent increase in time spent in front of a computer screen.

Instead, the national survey of over 3,000 people conducted last year found that consumption of traditional media has fallen more or less equally among Internet users and non-users since the project collected data in 2004.

"That indicates to us that the Internet isn't necessarily displacing traditional media, as is the widely held belief," said Charles Zamaria, the study's principal investigator and a professor at Ryerson University.

"Newspapers aren't going away and neither is television."

While time spent with traditional media is slowly decreasing across the board, due in part to the emergence of a "multi-channel universe," Mr. Zamaria argued that the Internet's role has so far been to supplement traditional media sources.

"That's a very outstanding part of our study that isn't seen in other studies."

The pattern holds true even for younger Internet users, Mr. Zamaria said.

Overall, Canadians on average devoted 45 hours a week last year to traditional media, down from about 50 hours three years ago. Meanwhile, they averaged 17 hours a week online, up from 13 hours in 2004 – in part due to an increase in broadband availability.

A similar trend was observed three years ago when the project's report on the 2004 survey was published. As one might expect, the latest study found that younger Canadians were more likely to turn to their PCs for information and entertainment whereas traditional media consumption was higher among older people.

Mr. Zamaria said another key finding in the new study was that Canadians are increasingly viewing the Internet as a place to spend their time, as opposed to a tool to locate information and entertainment – a shift he attributed in part to communication tools such as email and instant messaging, as well as the rising popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook.

"People feel a sense of belonging just by being online," he said. "This is a place that people like to visit."

However, some technology observers don't believe a peaceful co-existence between new and old media is sustainable.

Carmi Levy, senior vice-president of strategic consulting for AR Communications Inc. in Toronto, argues that Canadians have so far managed to squeeze in more Internet time without impacting their old media habits but at the expense of other activities.

As well, he credits laptops and wireless hand-held devices such as the iPhone for allowing people to increase their online time without disrupting their normal schedules.

However, he predicted people's online lives will grow to the point that they run out of hours in the day, forcing them to make choices.

Advances in technology could also hasten the shift.

"The Internet can't replace television infrastructure today," argued Mr. Levy. "Watching TV on the Internet remains a much less vibrant experience than watching TV on a television. But that's just a technological challenge."

-- Chris Sorenson is a business reporter with the Toronto Star