oday's college students — the first truly wired generation — are far more Net-adept than the general population, and will graduate with expectations of a high-speed Internet world that could push the technology development of the workplace and the home, according to a new report.

"The Internet is as commonplace in college students' lives as books, or pizza and beer," said the study's author, Steve Jones, professor and head of the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois-Chicago. "And probably, now that I think about it, a lot cheaper than pizza and beer. They're getting the Internet for free."

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The report, "The Internet Goes to College: How Students Are Living in the Future With Today's Technology," was produced by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in Washington, and provides a snapshot of an emerging young digital class.

One fifth of today's college students began using computers from the ages of 5 to 8, the authors state, and an overwhelming 86 percent of them had gone online compared with 59 percent of the general population; 72 percent check e-mail messages at least once a day.

The researchers also found that students use the Internet differently from the rest of the population, a fact that probably has as much to do with fast college Internet connections and free time as with an adventurous technological gestalt. They are are roughly twice as likely to have downloaded music as the general population, 60 percent versus 28 percent. Instant messages, used daily by 12 percent of the general population, are used by 26 percent of college students.

The online world is important to their education as well, and changes the way students research and learn. Nearly 75 percent of college students say they use the Internet more than they use the library to look for information; just 9 percent said they used the library more.

Students are also finding ways to incorporate the Net into their social lives, with a third saying that the majority of their computer use actually occurs outside of their homes and dormitory rooms. "Friday afternoon when classes were ending for the week, students were often observed congregating in the computer labs in groups ranging from two to seven people," the report said.

"College students have so integrated the Internet into their lives; it's something that goes virtually unnoticed and taken for granted," Mr. Jones said. "They don't think about using it, just like they don't think about using the TV and the telephone."

That kind of use builds expectations, Mr. Jones said — expectations that the outside world sometimes has trouble fulfilling. "They expect it to be available 24/7," he said.

The college report provides "a terrific look into the future," said Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet project. "The reason we care is that these students will be taking their online habits and expectations into their lives after college, and that will likely lead to significant changes in work and leisure."

The report was based on survey responses from 2,054 students at 27 schools nationwide. A team of graduate student researchers was also recruited to observe the behavior of students using the Internet at 10 institutions of higher education in the Chicago area. Surveys of Internet use and attitudes among the general American population were also conducted for the study.

The revelation that college students really like the Internet was less than surprising to Carl Whitman, executive director of e-operations at American University in Washington. "I wouldn't have known," he deadpanned, and said that his university had just completed a project that brought wireless Internet access to the entire campus — an initiative, he said, that the university hopes will make it attractive to school-shopping prospects with high-technology expectations.

The collegiate Internauts were comfortable with technology long before they got to college, said Matthew Pittinksky, the chairman of Blackboard Inc., a software company. "It's a tipping-point generation," he said. "When they left summer camp, they didn't collect addresses — they collected e-mail accounts."