http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/20...tm?POE=TECISVA
By Mike Snider, USA TODAY
That iPods are "in" on college campuses might not surprise you. That Apple's portable music players are more popular than beer? Now that's surprising.
Beer traditionally has had the biggest buzz with college students: Seventy-five percent consider drinking beer "in" on their campuses, according to Student Monitor's Lifestyle & Media Study.
Only once in the past decade of the biannual survey, in 1997, was beer bumped from the top spot — by the Internet, says Student Monitor's Eric Weil. The Ridgewood, N.J., research firm surveyed a representative group of 600 students.
Among the findings:
• iPods were the No. 1 "in" thing on campuses; 73% of students mentioned it. iPods were even more popular with Hispanic students (77%) and women (76%).
• Drinking beer tied with the college networking site Facebook.com (71%).
• Nos. 4 to 10 were drinking other alcohol (67%), text messaging (66%), downloading music (66%), going to clubs (65%), instant messaging (63%), working out (62%) and coffee (60%).
"We knew iPods were pervasive on campus as a learning and entertainment device, but we didn't see it rating that high," Weil says. "But I don't see any reason for Anheuser-Busch and Coors to worry."
That iPods and Facebook are two of the top three, and several other components of a digital lifestyle are highly ranked (social networking site MySpace was No. 13), suggests "how rapidly Internet-based phenomena can emerge," says Dan Updegrove, vice president for technology services at the University of Texas at Austin.
What about chasing the opposite sex? Isn't that still "in"?
"What we have seen in the past 10 years is they are more likely to be doing that in groups than individually," Weil says. "Maybe they think there's strength in numbers."
And a possible reason for beer's longevity? Says Updegrove: "Well, universities pride themselves on being bastions of both innovation — and tradition."
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