A new survey shows that American university students prefer Apple's iPod portable music players to drinking beer.
Nearly three quarters of 1,200 students from 100 American universities have ranked iPods as the trendiest item or activity.
Student Monitor, a market research firm that conducted the study, says this is only the second time in almost two decades that beer drinking was not top of the list. In a 1997 student survey, beer lost out to the Internet.
But this year, the brew also had competition from a social networking web site. Beer drinking shares second place with Facebook.com.
Last year, 59 percent of students named the iPod as popular, putting it well below alcohol-related activities. This year, 73 percent of surveyed students ranked the Apple gadget as "in."
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.