Europeans choosing Internet over TV

Almost six out of 10 West Europeans now regularly access the Internet and, for the first time, young people are more likely to go online for most days of the week than turn on the television, according to a new survey.

Still, the web is less and less the turf of the young: the past year saw a 12 percent jump in so-called 'silver surfers' — Europeans 55-and-older — using the Internet and an 8 percent rise in Internet use by women, said the survey by the European Interactive Advertising Association, a trade group of sellers of interactive media, released this week.

It said 16-to-24-year olds now prefer going online to watching the tube: 82 percent use the Internet between 5 and 7 days each week "while only 77 percent watch TV as regularly," a drop of 5 percent from 2006, the survey found.

It said 42 percent of users communicate via social networking sites at least once a month.