"How Do [They] Even
Do That?": How
Today's Technology
is Shaping
Tomorrow's Students
Amanda Lenhart | Pew Research Center
Dartmouth College
April 9, 2013
• Part of the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan “fact tank” based
in Washington, DC
• PRC’s mission is to provide high quality, objective data to thought
leaders and policymakers
• Pew data included in this talk is from nationally representative
telephone surveys of U.S. adults and teens (on landlines and cell
phones)
• Presentation slides and all data are available at pewinternet.org
I. WHAT IS THE TECHNOLOGICAL
ENVIRONMENT OF TODAY’S TEENS?
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This is Elizabeth.
She will be a first
year college student
in the Fall of 2013.
What kind of
technology did she
grow up with?
What kinds of
technology does she
use now?
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WHAT ARE THE DISRUPTIONS
SPURRED BY EACH OF THESE
INNOVATIONS?
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Elizabeth – Born 1995
Email is 27 years old
Today:
67% of teens use
email
PCs are 20 years old
Today:
93% of teens access a
desktop/laptop @
home
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6
Elizabeth – Born 1995
Commercial cell phones were 17 years old
Today:
78% of teens have a cell phone
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Elizabeth – Born 1995
First great browser – 1993
Netscape IPO – Aug. 9,
1995
World Wide Web is 5
years old.
Today: 95% of teens use the internet
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Elizabeth – Toddler years
Today:
37% of teens own a
smartphone
Palm Pilot – 1996
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Elizabeth – Toddler Years & Pre-school
14% of online teens keep
blogs (down from 30% at
peak
Blogs – 1997, 1999,
2001, 2003
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Elizabeth – First Grade
Wikipedia - 2001
Today:
70% of online youth use Wikipedia
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Elizabeth – Mid-Elementary School
MySpace - 2003
Facebook - 2004
Today:
82% of online teens use social network sites
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Elizabeth – Fourth Grade
YouTube – 2005
Today:
27% have recorded and then uploaded videos
13% stream live video to the internet
37% of teens use video chat
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Elizabeth is in 5th grade | Twitter – 2006
Today:
24% of teens use Twitter
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Elizabeth is
in 6th Grade.
Tumblr is
founded in
2007.
Today, 5%
of teens use
Tumblr.
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•
T
Elisabeth – 8th Grade – age 14
Foursquare – 2009
Today, 6% of teens
“check-in” with their location
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Instagram – 2010
Elizabeth is 14 – 9th grade.
11% of teens use Instagram; 3% say they
use it “most often” of social network sites.
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Snapchat- Sept. 2011
Too new to have
youth data.
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Internet Use in the U.S. in 2000
46% of US adults used the internet
5% had home broadband connections
53% owned a cell phone
0% connected to internet wirelessly
0% used social network sites
_________________________
Information flowed mainly one way
Information consumption was a
stationary activity
Slow, stationary connections
built around a desktop
computer
The Internet in 2012
82% of US adults use the internet
2/3 have broadband at home
88% have a cell phone; 46% are
smartphone users
19% have a tablet computer
19% have an e-reader
2/3 are wireless internet users
65% of online adults use SNS
Mobile devices have
fundamentally changed the
relationship between
information, time and space
II. CHANGES TO CAMPUS LIFE AND
CULTURE
SOCIAL MEDIA CHANGES
FORMATION OF RELATIONSHIPS ON
CAMPUS
“Although headed off to different
schools, they had a similar
experience of learning their roommate
assignment and immediately turning
to Facebook to investigate that
person. Some had already begun
developing deep, mediated
friendships while others had already
asked for roommate transfers.
Beyond roommates, all had used
Facebook to find other newly minted
freshman, building relationships long
before they set foot on campus.”
– danah boyd
When pre-frosh turn to Facebook
before arriving on campus, they do
so to find other people who share
their interests, values, and
background. As such, they begin a
self-segregation process that results
in increased “homophily” on
campuses. Homophily is a
sociological concept that refers to the
notion that birds of a feather stick
together. In other words, teens
inadvertently undermine the
collegiate social engineering project
of creating diverse connections
through common experiences.
-danah boyd
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SOCIAL MEDIA CHANGES
INVESTMENT IN CAMPUS
COMMUNITY
Easier to maintain connections with home
• 82% of teens 12-17 use social media
sites
• 78% of teens have a cell phone, 37%
have a smartphone
• 37% of teens use video chat
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TECHNOLOGY CHANGES OUR
RELATIONSHIP TO PLACES
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Augmented reality changes relationship to physical
places
Merges data with physical place
III. CHANGES TO EXPECTATIONS
AROUND LEARNING AND LEARNING
ENVIRONMENTS
TECHNOLOGY IS THE CLASSROOM
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Technology IS the classroom
• MOOCs?
• 3% of K-12 students have
experience with distance learning
• 270,000 youth go to virtual schools
(out of 55.2 million K-12 students in
US)
• Blended learning
• Self-directed learning
“When we interview young
people, they will talk about how
the Internet makes it easy for
them to look around and surf for
information in low risk and
unstructured ways. Some kids
immerse themselves in online
tutorials, forums, and expert
communities where they dive
deep into topics and areas of
interest, whether it is fandom,
creative writing, making online
videos, or gaming communities.”
– Mimi Ito
“Young people are
desperate for learning
that is relevant and
part of the fabric of
their social lives,
where they are
making choices about
how, when, and what
to learn, without it all
being mapped for
them in advance.”
TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM
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Bring Your Own Device
Bring Your Own Device
What do students do with cell phones in the
classroom?
• 42% use the phone to look up information in
class
• 38% take pictures or record a video for a class
assignment
• 18% upload school related content to the internet
• 11% text in class with teacher or other student
as a part of a class assignment
• 2% use an online cell phone platform like CELLY
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The “Flipped Classroom”
K-12 teachers are not impressed
• 87% of AP & NWP teachers
say these technologies are
creating an “easily distracted
generation with short
attention spans”
• 83% say amount of available
information is overwhelming
• 76% of teachers “strongly
agree” that internet search
engines have condition
students to expect to find
information quickly &
easily
• 67% say technologies “do
more to distract students
than help them
academically.”
• Discourages wide use of
resources and makes it
harder to find credible
materials
But teachers also find positives
• 99% of AP & NWP teachers say it gives
students access to wider range of
resources
• 77% of teachers say internet & digital
search tools have “a mostly positive”
impact on HS student research habits
• 65% say it makes students more selfsufficient in their research
Final thoughts & questions
•
•
•
•
•
Technology changes our relationship to place, but the
fundamental lure of the elite residential college will remain.
Continue to engage in practices that put people with different
experiences together, to counteract the pull of technology of like
towards like
The learners walking through your doors will continue to be
shaped by an ever-changing technological milieu – how much will
you move to meet them and how much will you hold on to the
value and efficiencies of the current teaching models?
Are MOOCs the new textbook? Will we flip our classrooms with
MOOCs?
How will colleges manage the challenges of distraction while
harnessing the promise and opportunities of bringing devices into
the classroom?
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Katherine is
8 months
old
What will it
be like to be
a college
student
when she
attends, 17
years from
now?
Amanda Lenhart
Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project
http://www.pewinternet.org
@amanda_lenhart
photo by arcticpenguin
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