TEENAGERS HOOKED ON COMICS, TV SOAPS

Teenage students are hooked on comic books and a television diet of soap operas and entertainment news, a survey has found.

A total of 968 Form Three and Four students from 18 schools responded to the University of Hong Kong's Social Sciences Research Centre study.

It found nearly half had read a magazine on the day they were questioned. Of these, 30 per cent read comics which featured violence, romance or ghost stories. On average, respondents spent more than half-an-hour each day reading magazines.

Asked to rank their favourite medium of communication, teenagers rated comics 81 out of 100 marks, higher than television's 71 and newspapers' 66 marks.

The survey showed that nearly 80 per cent who watched television spent the longest time watching soap operas or dramas. When they picked up a newspaper, entertainment news was the first thing they turned to.

The survey, entitled Teenagers' Media Diary, was commissioned by the RTHK programme Media Education.