Generation ‘M’ and 3G

GENERATION M stands for either "Generation Media" or the "Millennials." See Neil Howe and Bill Straus' book Millennials Rising. Both terms refer to the group of young people who are growing up in the early part of this century. The Millennials are distinctively different from either the "baby boomers" or "Gen Xers." Millennials have different values and different social structures, and they not only use technology, they embrace it. This column explores the relationship between the Millennials and several technologies. One of the most interesting and reliable sources of information about the Millennials is the Internet and American Life Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts (www. pewinternet.org). Of particular interest are the 27 July 2005 report titled Teens and Technology: Youth Are Leading the Transition to a Fully Wired and Mobile Nation and a March 2006 presentation made to the annual conference of the Public Library Association titled "Life Online: Teens and Technology and the World to Come," by Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet project. The first report is 48 pages in length, and the second is 16, so I have space here to discuss only a few tidbits of information from each. Moreover, the Pew study deals only with U.S. children. Information on technology use around the world is available from the UNICEF Magic website (www. unicef.org/magic) and from Nielsen//Net Ratings (www.nielsen-netratings.com). Here are some of the more interesting data from Teens and Technology: * 87% of U.S. teens between 12 and 17 years of age use the Internet; just 66% of adults do so; * 51% of teen Internet users say they go online on a daily basis; * 81% of teen Internet users play games online; * 76% get news online; * 43% have made purchases online; and * 31% use the Internet to get health information. Since so many teens use the Internet to obtain health information, we all need to hope they are going to reputable sites and that they are "media literate." Obviously, some portion of these information seekers are searching on topics they feel uncomfortable talking about with others--especially adults. The study reported a sharp jump in Internet use between the sixth and seventh grades--from 60% to 82%. By the 11th and 12th grades, Internet use reaches 94%. Just over half of teens (51%) say they have broadband access, and 45% say they have a cell phone. Teens have a decided preference for using Instant Messaging (IM). "When asked which mode of communication they most often use when communicating with friends, online teens consistently choose IM over a wide array of contexts," Teens and Technology reports. The findings for text messaging or "texting" on cell phones were similar. Both modes of communication are becoming increasingly popular. In her excellent presentation mentioned above, Lee Rainie reprinted some data on overall media use by 8- to 18-year-olds that she took from a study titled Generation M, which was released in March 2005 by the Kaiser Family Foundation (www.kff.org/ entmedia). According to the study, children in this age span spend an average each day of 3:04 hours watching television; 1:11 hours watching videos/DVDs/movies; 0:43 hours reading print media; 1:44 hours listening to audio media; 1:02 hours using computers; and 0:49 hours playing video games. The total "exposure" to these forms of electronic media is 8:33 hours per day, while the total "usage" sums to 6:21 hours because sometimes the kids are multitasking. I mentioned above that the values of Millennials differed from those of prior generations. Once again, according to Teens and Technology, 75% of teens agree that "music downloading and file-sharing is so easy to do, it's unrealistic to expect people not to do it." And 55% say they "do not care much whether what they download is copyrighted or not. …