TOKYO, June 29 (Xinhuanet) -- The Japanese are spending more time scanning the Internet than reading newspapers as their way to learn news, a survey showed Wednesday.

    The people here took an average of 37 minutes a day surfing on the Web, up five minutes from the previous year, while the time spent on newspapers was two minutes lower to 31 minutes, according the annual survey in March by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology.

    The survey also showed people spent an average of three hours and 31 minutes watching television.

    The Internet was particularly popular among teenagers as they spent 108 minutes a day before computers, yet only 23 minutes reading newspapers.

    The survey also showed that the older a person was, the less time he or she generally spent on the Internet, although Internet use still overwhelmed newspaper reading in all age brackets except for people in their 60s, who spent 58 minutes on newspapers and 50 minutes on the Internet.

    The institute randomly selected people aged 13 to 69 across thecountry and received valid replies from about 2,000 of them. Enditem