A survey shows Chinese university students and white-collar office workers spend more than six hours surfing the Internet every day, and are the heaviest users of the Internet.

College students spend 6.1 hours online every day, while white-collar office workers spend 6.3 hours, according to the survey by Horizon Research and Horizonkey, a research company in Beijing.

In the survey, conducted among 10,720 participants in February, almost 100 percent of university students and white-collar office workers used the Internet and regard it as their major source of information.

"It is clear that young people rely more on the Internet," said Wang You, a researcher responsible for the survey at the company. "They mostly use laptops to search for information and contact friends via mobile networks, including Wechat and Weibo."

Of the participants, about 1,300 were people over 50 years old living in cities and 25.4 percent said the Internet is their main source of news, Wang said, adding that this group of people spend 2.4 hours a day online, searching for information and communicating with their children.