Exploring Everyday Information Practices of Urban Teens in Pakistan

Abstract

This study aims to explore the ways through which Pakistani urban teens seek, use, and share their everyday information. It also identifies the challenges they have to face during this practice, and the relationship between teens’ demographics and their everyday information practices is also explored. The quantitative approach was applied to conduct a questionnaire survey among 100 urban teens. Descriptive and inferential statistics analyzed the collected data through SPSS version 19. Results show that everyday information practices play an important role in teens' lives and parents are the major source of information for urban teens, while from non-human sources computers and the internet are basic sources. Urban teens manage and wield their information before sharing it with others and at the same time, their information-sharing behaviour is highly positive. A positive relationship was found between teens’ demographics (age, gender, and number of siblings) and their everyday life. Multiple challenges for seeking, using, and sharing information are also part of teens' everyday life information practices. This study strongly recommend that information management is an important component of everyday information practices.