Patterns of internet usage and attitudes towards using the internet for learning among youth in Latvia

Abstract

Computing and the internet have revolutionized the way young people communicate with each other, how they work, play, participate in public life and politics, and also how they learn and acquire new information. Drawing upon data gathered from an online quantitative survey of high school and university students in Latvia (n = 2912), conducted as part of the Latvian Council of Science supported project “The Impact of Internet Use Patterns on the Development of Youth’s Cognitive Styles”, this paper analyses youth internet usage patterns and their relationship to the cognitive orientations of youth towards internet use in the learning process. Employing factor analysis to assess the nature and frequency of online activities among youth, the study identified four distinct dimensions (models) of internet use: the creative dimension (focusing on content creation), the communication orientation, the gaming and opinion expression orientation, and the informative-analytical dimension (centred on information retrieval and consumption). Additionally, four dimensions of attitudes towards leveraging the internet for learning purposes were identified. Further analysis of the data showed that there are significant correlations between patterns of internet use and the cognitive orientations of young people. Intellectually oriented individuals are more likely to use the internet to search for information, while among internet trustees, playing computer games is predominant, etc. Networking and communication on the internet are typical of people oriented towards collaboration. Both intellectual and internet-reliant orientations have a very strong impact on internet usage practices; the first orientation can be conditionally described as positive, the second as negative. The third (“multi-taskers”) and fourth (“distracted”) orientations characterized by less deliberate metacognitive choices. The impact of these orientations on internet usage patterns is less powerful, possibly due to the fact that young people belonging to these groups are more exposed to the external social environment and technologies, and their internet usage patterns are likely to be driven by their direct usage practices and spontaneously established habits.