The “Google Generation” – No Search Experts

January 19, 2008

Ahh, clichés. Aren’t older people supposed to be technical ignorants and “web allergic”, while the younger guys and girls surf, chat and entertain themselves on the web 24/7? Well, apparenty that’s wrong. A new UK report (PDF version) on the habits of the “Google Generation” finds that kids born since 1993 aren’t quite the internet super-geeks they’re sometimes made out to be.

Yes, it’s true that young people are generally competent with technology, but it’s not true that students today are “expert searchers.” In fact, the report calls this “a dangerous myth.”But these are some truths about the “Google generation”, according to the report:

• They like to cut-and-paste. “There is a lot of anecdotal evidence and plagiarism is a serious issue.”
• They prefer visual information over text. “But text is still important… For library interfaces, there is evidence that multimedia can quickly lose its appeal, providing short-term novelty.”
• They multitask all the time. “It is likely that being exposed to online media early in life may help to develop good parallel processing skills.”

Does that mean they don’t care about copyrights, get easily bored about lengthy investigative magazine articles and suffer from ADD big time?? Well, somehow I expected a little bit more. Good news: We, the “older people” (meaning over 30), still have some chances to compete in the digital age….

Nearly 50 million Americans create web content

May 31, 2006

From ClickZ:At home broadband users are more likely to create and post user-generated content on the Web, according to the “Home Broadband Adoption 2006,” a report published by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Forty-eight million American adults have contributed some form of user-generated content on the Internet, it found. That’s 35 percent of Internet users. Of those adults who have posted content on the Web, 73 percent, or 31 million, have a broadband connection at home. “[The Web is] shifting now to user-generated content; it shows people engaging with the Internet in a number of different ways in their lives,” said John Horrigan, associate director of research at Pew Internet & American Life Project. “It shows that people are pretty interested in using the technology to put something of themselves on the Internet, not just pull down information from the Internet.”