According to a recent study, 32% of Americans now turn to the Internet as their most common source of entertainment, second only to 58% who said they turn to TV. The report, by Edelman, which examines the broadening definition of entertainment in an Internet age, also shows that 83% of those surveyed care about “being able to purchase the entertainment easily,” and 80% care about “being able to access the entertainment immediately.” The findings support what you probably already knew- with iPhones, iPads, Kindles, Netflix streaming on your laptop and the like, more people are spending more time getting more from their gadgets. What does this trend really mean?

For starters, it puts another nail in the coffin of print media. But is that good? The aging debate about whether digital entertainment is greener than print media rages on, but have we as consumers already made up our minds?

Don Carli suggests in his piece for MediaShift, consumers are constantly confronted with, what he calls, a false dilemma: that “digital media is the environmentally preferable choice and that print media is the environmentally destructive choice. But is it possible that digital media could be more destructive to the environment and a greater threat to trees, bees, rivers and forests in the United States than paper-making or printing?” Carli suggests “there is growing recognition that digital media technology uses significant amounts of energy from coal fired power plants which are making a significant contribution to global warming. Greenpeace estimates that by 2020 data centers will demand more electricity than is currently demanded by France, Brazil, Canada, and Germany combined.”

The paper industry, for its part, is also out there making its case. The Print Council reminds people that “paper is made from wood – a resource that is being renewed on a daily basis by the paper and forest products industry, which plants millions of trees every year. Electronic devices are made of plastics and other non-renewable resources and often contain toxic chemicals and metals. Only 18% of the U.S. electronic devices are currently recycled, and many of those are not being reused for other products. In the U.S., nearly 60% of all paper is recycled, recovered and reused to make new paper products.” As Carli suggests in his piece for MediaShift, “if your goal is to save trees or do something good for the environment, the choice to go paperless may not be as green or simple as some would like you to think.”

But the Edelman study shows that consumers have spoken. The 21st century will be shaped by new forms of digital entertainment, information and distraction. So, in some ways, this debate about which is greener is irrelevant. The answer is clear, we need to make digital more green.