The Ipsos Reid study titled Online News and Information Seeking: What the Future Holds, suggests Internet use among Canadians is on the rise, up about 46 per cent to 12.7 hours a week from 8.7 hours in 2002.

That increase comes while radio listening has dropped an average of five hours to 11 hours per week.

Television remained atop the list of the most-used media sources, according to the poll, with Canadians watching an average of 14.3 hours of TV per week.

But younger Internet users were found to have spent 14.7 hours online a week, about three hours more than they did on radio and television.

"For the first time since we began tracking these activities, younger Canadians are spending more time on the Internet than watching TV," said Catherine Rogers of Ipsos Reid.

"This change in media consumption has significant implications for advertisers and marketers," she added. "Any advertiser looking at this demographic should be re-evaluating their marketing strategies if they haven't already."

Teens spent far less time reading newspapers, totalling only 2.5 hours a week.

The poll indicated that Canadians turned to the Internet for specific or "niche-like" news -- such as health or travel information -- but still relied mostly on television for general news.

More than a quarter of Internet users said they didn't have a favourite online news source, while no specific website had a major lead ahead of its competitors, the poll found.

The study was based on two surveys of 1,000 people -- one conducted online and one by phone -- conducted March 30 through April 27. The results are considered accurate with 3.1 percentage points, 95 per cent of the time.