A recent report by the by the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that teenagers (a.k.a. digital natives) use telephone and face-to-face contact for their primary social interactions. A second report finds that 18-30 year olds are more likely to use public libraries than any other age group.
While neither report was specifically designed to explore how online engagement affects offline engagement, both indicate that young people use the internet to supplement, rather than replace, social contact and participation in civic activities.
Results from a survey about how people use online information searches to solve problems
challenge the assumption that libraries are losing relevance in the internet age.
Libraries drew visits by more than half of Americans (53%) in the past year for all kinds of purposes, not just the problems mentioned in this survey. And it was the young adults in tech-loving Generation Y (age 18-30) who led the pack. Compared to their elders, Gen Y members were the most likely to use libraries for problem-solving information and in general patronage for any purpose.
Furthermore, it is young adults who are the most likely to say they will use libraries in the future when they encounter problems: 40% of Gen Y said they would do that, compared with 20% of those above age 30 who say they would go to a library.
Pew's study on Teens and Social Media finds that
Despite the influx of digital media into their lives, teens continue to rely on telephones to keep in touch with their friends.
While text-based digital communication technologies are increasingly prevalent, the telephone continues to reign as the instrument of choice when teenagers want to interact with their friends. However, those who have cell phones and those who are avid internet users have different communications profiles from the entire teen population.
Face-to-face contact still matters.
All of these technology-based communication methods still do not replace face-to-face communication for many teenagers.17 In the general teen population, 31% of the teens in this survey reported that they spent time with friends in person doing social activities outside of school every day, 34% of teens reported that they did so several times a week, and 24% of teens reported that they spent time in-person with friends after school at least once a week. Older teens – the very people who are more often using other forms of communication like cell phones or instant messaging – are more likely to report spending time with friends in person doing social activities outside of school every day or several times a week than younger teens.
Across the spectrum, the communication activity that changes the least is the frequency of face-to-face encounters; 31% of all teens have this kind of interaction with friends every day outside of school; 34% of cell phone owners do so; 35% of multi- channel teens have such encounters; and 38% of social network site users have in-person meetings with friends every day.
As dana boyd comments:
What Pew's data shows is that online participation correlates with offline participation. They are not able to show causality (and they do not try to claim that they can), but such a correlation still contradicts the ever-present myth that online activities cause a decline in offline activities. Of course, don't misread this correlation in the opposite direction either. In other words, you cannot say that if you get a group of teens involved online, they will also get involved offline.
Her highlights are worth checking out if you don't have time to read the entire report.
Now this is very interesting, impressive and never thought of. In simple words well done for providing creative information.
Posted by: Jeff Paul Internet Millions | March 06, 2009 at 02:17 AM