In this wide-ranging new talk that was given as a part of Dartmouth College’s Strategic Planning process and their “Leading Voices in Higher Education Speaker Series http://strategicplanning.dartmouth.edu/aspire/leading-voices-in-higher-education-speaker-series, Amanda Lenhart talked about the technological milieu of today’s teens and college students as they grew from children to young adults and the ways in which each major new technological development disrupted our previous communication strategies. The talk also explored the ways that social media is changing campus culture as well as how digital tools are changing where learning happens – MOOCs and mixed classes, flipped classrooms – as well as how it occurs for K-12 as well as within higher education. To view all 71 minutes of the talk and Q &A, as well as shorter video on the future of the university, please visit: http://strategicplanning.dartmouth.edu/aspire/amanda-lenhart

1. "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

2. • 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

3. I. WHAT IS THE TECHNOLOGICAL
ENVIRONMENT OF TODAY’S TEENS?
6/12/2013 3

4. 6/12/2013 4
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?

5. WHAT ARE THE DISRUPTIONS
SPURRED BY EACH OF THESE
INNOVATIONS?
6/12/2013 5

6. January 9, 2009 6
Elizabeth – Born 1995
PCs are 20 years oldEmail is 27 years old
Today:
67% of teens use
email
Today:
93% of teens access a
desktop/laptop @
home

7. January 9, 2009 7
Elizabeth – Born 1995
Commercial cell phones were 17 years old
Today:
78% of teens have a cell phone

8. Elizabeth – Born 1995
January 9, 2009 8
World Wide Web is 5
years old.
Today: 95% of teens use the internet
First great browser – 1993
Netscape IPO – Aug. 9,
1995

9. January 9, 2009 9
Elizabeth – Toddler years
Palm Pilot – 1996
Today:
37% of teens own a
smartphone

10. January 9, 2009 10
Elizabeth – Toddler Years & Pre-school
Blogs – 1997, 1999,
2001, 2003
14% of online teens keep
blogs (down from 30% at
peak

11. January 9, 2009 11
Elizabeth – First Grade
Wikipedia - 2001
Today:
70% of online youth use Wikipedia

12. January 9, 2009 12
Elizabeth – Mid-Elementary School
MySpace - 2003 Facebook - 2004
Today:
82% of online teens use social network sites

13. January 9, 2009 13
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

14. January 9, 2009 14
Elizabeth is in 5th grade | Twitter – 2006
Today:
24% of teens use Twitter

15. Title of presentation 6/12/2013 15
Elizabeth is
in 6th Grade.
Tumblr is
founded in
2007.
Today, 5%
of teens use
Tumblr.

16. • T
6/12/2013 16
Elisabeth – 8th Grade – age 14
Foursquare – 2009
Today, 6% of teens
“check-in” with their location

17. 6/12/2013 17
Instagram – 2010
Elizabeth is 14 – 9th grade.
11% of teens use Instagram; 3% say they
use it “most often” of social network sites.

18. Snapchat- Sept. 2011
Too new to have
youth data.
6/12/2013 18

19. 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
Internet Use in the U.S. in 2000
Slow, stationary connections
built around a desktop
computer

20. 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
The Internet in 2012
Mobile devices have
fundamentally changed the
relationship between
information, time and space

21. II. CHANGES TO CAMPUS LIFE AND
CULTURE

22. SOCIAL MEDIA CHANGES
FORMATION OF RELATIONSHIPS ON
CAMPUS

23. “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

24. 6/12/2013 24
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

25. SOCIAL MEDIA CHANGES
INVESTMENT IN CAMPUS
COMMUNITY

26. 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
26

27. TECHNOLOGY CHANGES OUR
RELATIONSHIP TO PLACES
6/12/2013 27

28. Augmented reality changes relationship to physical
places
Merges data with physical place

29. III. CHANGES TO EXPECTATIONS
AROUND LEARNING AND LEARNING
ENVIRONMENTS

30. TECHNOLOGY IS THE CLASSROOM
6/12/2013 30

31. 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

32. “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.”

33. TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM
6/12/2013 33

36. Bring Your Own Device
Bring Your Own Device

37. 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
6/12/2013 37

38. The “Flipped Classroom”

39. 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

40. 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 self-
sufficient in their research

41. 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?
6/12/2013 41

42. Katherine is
8 months
old
What will it
be like to be
a college
student
when she
attends, 17
years from
now?

43. Title of presentation 6/12/2013 43
Amanda Lenhart
Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project
http://www.pewinternet.org
@amanda_lenhart
photo by arcticpenguin