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AP Reports Young People Use The Internet
prostoalex writes "You read a lot of stories about older generation either adopting or having troubles with Internet. But some people in this world cannot imagine their everyday life without Internet. The kids who went to school during the early days of the Web are now going to colleges and are demanding broadband, downloading music, sharing photos and posting to Web logs, Associated Press says. Most of the everyday tasks, like homework and job search, have migrated to the Web as well. According to the latest data, 188.5 million Americans and more than 1 billion people globally are online."
Where's the news in this? A story on slashdot about the fact that there are people out there in the world who can't imagine not having net access? Look who you are talking to here...
stuff
In Korea, only elderly young people use the internet.
Here in the UK there seems to be a shift in younger children (not late teens) back to more sporting activities , outdoor games etc and away from the computer/console. Also the use of the computer and internet in schools seems to have been a bit of white elephant as letting kids just surf is no substitute for proper teaching.
"Young people use the internet" ==
"Old people yell 'get off my lawn!!'"
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
What is the most sensless news post that has been posted in /. ?? any votes?,
One for this!
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
whats next? a large news outlet discovers blogging
That's an appropriate use of the Obvious tag for once. Hang on a minute... Oopse, Wrong site...
Young people are now the savviest of the tech-savvy,...
...
Yes, from my point of view, especially those who have failed to learn their native language
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Bill? Is that you?
The dictionary called, it wants its definition of redundant back.
Internet uses young people!
They should really restart their monitor. That usually fixes it for me.
In all seriousness, can you even get the internets when you're old? I know my old people are still using Toltec Bead Messengers. Those guys can run like crazy (at least 22 hertz an hour), and you have a nice little belt when you're done checking your news-groups.
From the article:
AOL's Bird predicts that teens will be among the first to embrace new, Web-based video technology. "You will very soon be able to shoot video messages and play those video messages on your blog that your friends can go to," Bird says. "So your community, your scheduling, your friends, your holidays - all of this stuff will live in an online environment."
They already can, there's already a subculture based around it, and Maddox has already made fun of it.
Karma: Non-Heinous
30-40% of Internet use at work is not work-related
./ at work...
You mean getting to your site from
redvsblue.com
::BANG!::
Sarge: Did you just shoot yourself in the foot?
Simmons: Yeah I do that sometimes now..
In America, Only Young People Use The Internet
Intel Inside. Idiot Outside.
Time to make it thirteen, I guess.
"who went to school during the early days of the Web are now going to colleges and are demanding broadband, downloading music, sharing photos and posting to Web logs"
Then discovering, to their sorrow, that these services are not free, but were provided to them by their parents. Grow the hell up.
Please please post a new story for the homepage! it is a shame to see this as the first story in the Definitely-tech-geek site... can you imagine if someone enters and see what we "geeks" are talking about lol
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
about the internet "changing everything" had some truth to it. The dot com euphoria got me into [and just as promptly out of] several jobs at startups that were funded because even smart [ok, greedy] people believed absolutely everyone would be shoping on line, be in constant contact with all their friends and so on...
I know booking air travel is largely out of the hands of travel agents so a few business activities are pretty much dominated by internet. But other activities like watching movies are more representative of the reported internet-demanding demographic...and sure enough: the video stores, even chains like Blockbuster, are closing in my area or running nearly constant sales and promotions to compete with the downloads...kinda unfair to those who still dial up for internet and pay for movies. [did you sell your AOL/timeWarner stock yet?]
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
oh hello. just so slashdot knows, females do read this lovli page =) i wish i were half as smart as all of u, and i 3 geeks. it's so sad that alot of u dont get enough luv. i luv u all =)
-stormi
"if only i had known i would have been a locksmith." -albert einstein
Thats alot of americans online.
According to www.census.gov the current population of people in the world.
U.S. 294,915,774
World 6,404,645,282
07:19 EST Dec 06, 2004
"Everyday" is the same as "every day":
Everyday -- Commonplace and ordinary; "the familiar everyday world"
It's the old story: college campuses are becoming more and more connected. Students are getting more "internet-savvy" as they do everything online. There seems to be an overemphasis on the "connectedness" of colleges - this doesn't necessarily translate into a good educational environment. Take a look at the America's top connected universities and compare to the best universities. Two different lists.
PimpMyMazda.com - Crazy mods to a 2002 Mazda Protege DX.
yea.. so u can outsource it to bangalore
fifteen jugglers, five believers
> "Everyday" is the same as "every day":
I meant to say: ' "Everyday" is not the same as "every day"'
For the longest time, I thought that the free exchange of information that the Internet brings would ensure that good ideas get spread, and that the overall knowledge of its users would rise as a result of being exposed to better information. What seems to have happened, though, is that people who use internet got stupider. Nobody can spell anymore (it's considered 'cool' to screw up even the most orthographically simple words). Arguments on internet boards (with a few exceptions) are getting stupider, and people who would get a good spanking IRL are turning into the most obnoxious flamers. Instead of using the vast amounts of information available to them to reexamine their views, people seek out only the articles and sites which support their already cemented opinions, with little regard to critical thought.
Sadly, it seems that, while the Internet was ready to face the challenges of global information exchange 20 years ago, we are not nearly at that stage yet. Simply providing the tools hasn't helped the society as a whole to improve our level of communication, or to expand our knowledge through the availability of information (fringe groups like scientists excluded). Because of this reason, I'm wondering whether Internet in schools will serve the purpose I originally believed it would serve, or if it will simply produce a new army of AOL and MSN Messenger trolls.
...and how much of the article would you have to change to get something that probably appeared in print fifty or so years ago?
That's my exact thoughts when I first read this.
Let me suggest a few, AP.
Many Roadway Users Drive Automobiles
Sleepers Using Beds Now More Than Ever
Old People Not as Young as They Used to Be
Study Reveals Phone Usage Common Among Americans
http://xkcd.com/386/
Does this make anyone else wonder what the next big thing is going to be that we'll be too old to figure out but the younger generation will be all over?
I guess then we'll know how our parents and grandparents felt about the Internet and computers in general.
I'm a big tall mofo.
More generally, each generation is more adept at using the technology it grew up using, and less adept at using what its forebears had.
My grandfather's generation toasted bread on a stove or in an oven, usually burning wood. They got electricity in their homes so they could go hi-tech and use a toaster. Well, they needed lights, too, but perfect toast was a big draw.
I'm a tail-end Boomer, born in 1963. My dad's generation could do trigonometry on a slide rule; I need a calculator.
Dad knew FORTRAN and BASIC. I know many computer languages.
I got my first computer, a TRS-80 Model II, in 1977. I learned BASIC and a little Z80 assembler. I needed to learn programming just to use the machine.
My kids have had, as long as they can remember, at least one computer in the house, usually networked together and with Internet access. They don't know any programming languages; they haven't needed to learn any to use the computer.
To my generation, computers were nerdy. To theirs, computers are more like TVs or toasters: part of the furniture.
Recently I gave my 16-year-old daughter, who's not a nerd, a new computer, running Linux. I told her it was different, but that it was Free. Being an idealist, she thought that was Just Totally Cool. A day later she told me proudly that she had her CD collecton "programmed in" so that it had all the information about the tracks and artists for all her tunes.
It's just part of the furniture.
sigs, as if you care.
It is not just the children or older generation, but also middle aged people who go seeking porn on the intarweb.
Why UNIX?
This really isn't much of a surprise. I was on the cutting edge as early as eight or nine years old, doing BBSes back in the 80s. I even ran one for nine years. Most of my BBS friends who were of equivelent age range (+/- 3 years) went right to the net in 1994 when it became more widely available and had already started the process we're seeing now.
The only reason we haven't seen this sooner is that the BBS world wasn't quite so accessible to your average kid-- you had to know a lot more to get online than you do now.
This was not news to anyone. This was not stuff that matters. This was just a shill piece by Clickz Stats - and you gotta kind of wonder about their reliability, since they can't count or proof-read. They're probably a Diebold subsidiary, or angling to become one.
At least ten years. Or maybe never the way our country is voteing for any random idiot.
"Yeah, a shrink ray! Just like that time on Muppet Babies!"
Depend on the AP to point out the obvious...
No, these aren't "essentials". You can easily live without them. Sure they are nice, but they aren't something you really miss when you're "cut off".
What you miss is information. Plain and simple, google for answer for a question at hand. Be it Bloody Mary recipe, method of calculating 15^17, tomorrow train departure, retail price of a phone your friend offers you as "real bargain", people's opinions about a bank you're going to choose, any of hundreds or thousands daily questions, that required significant effort before Internet. It's like an extra limb or extra sense, something you do instinctively, "But what a problem, this is obvious?" you say surprised to a person who's not net-savvy, who thinks some question will be hard to answer. And without access to the net you feel very helpless, just like missing a limb or a sense, when you need a chip datasheet, address of a public service office, map of some other town, when your ISP cut you off or something like that - you're used to that data just being there, and when you can't access it it feels just as bad as if you forgot something very important...
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
You've got to be kidding me. This article wasn't that great to begin with, but phrases like this kill me.
There's no way you could consider anonymity an "unexpected benefit" of the Internet. Forget it. It's one of the most obvious features you could imagine.
Anyone else remember anon.penet.fi? It made great use of the anonymous nature of the Internet for many purposes beginning in the early 90s. Not the first use of anonymous communication on the Internet, I'm sure... But a very popular one for the time.
Almost 10 years old. It has to be some kind of record.
[ I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance ] -- Isaac Asimov
Users are not programmers. That's why programmers have jobs.
You don't have to know how to internal combustion works (or even what it is) to change your oil and maintain your car.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
the news in this is, that stupid people just figured this out!
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
...on exactly how old we're talking about.;-)
If senility sets in, "lucid" wouldn't exactly be the word I'd use to describe the sentences.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
look at the title: "AP Reports Young People Use The Internet"
is this some kind of joke?
worst.....story.....ever
I'm not sure what the purpose of this /. story was other than to make us late 20-somethings feel old. (and 30-somethings even older).
Back in high school (1992), I cheated on a report for history class, copying a bunch of material off of an encyclopedia cd-rom, printing it on our dot-matrix printer, and coloring the graphics in with colored pencil. I kind of felt like a tool when the teacher held the report in front of the class and said "This is the best report I've ever seen, you all should learn something from it!" Do something on a computer with graphics for a class now, and that's the normal expected thing to do. Even color, no need for colored pencils.
Late 1994 I started college and heard about this thing called "email". I asked around, searching high and low how to get to use this email thing, and they finally told me that I had to go to the library, fill out a form, watch a video on how to use it. And lo it was beautiful. Pine, all text. They had an IRC that was the lively hangout for the email-elite.
And then, the discovery of the BBS... which quite a few ancients still hang out on: ISCA. Used to be a hangout of college kids. Now chock full of a 25+ crowd, and not a teenager to be found anywhere.
Back when MUDs were the big time-waster, there was speculation about graphical MUDs. And how slow and cludgy they were. WHo would have ever imagined Everquest and the like, back then?
TO go back in time, back pre-spam, pre-spyware/adware, back when we were all innocents. That would be cool.
This is having a negative impact on the reading habits of a generation.
Also in the AP, smoking leads to health problems, sex may cause pregnancy, and driving without a seatbelt may increase the risk of dying in an automobile accident.
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
Of course, now that I have a job and learn about other interesting-sounding places, I've realized that you really just have to look at the web pages of specific companies, which might be hard for graduates without a good frame of reference (i.e. already being in the industry) to locate. On the whole, I've found sites dedicated to job searching to be utterly worthless.
AP reports that researchers in Banglaturkistan are now slicing bread. This astonishing turn of events opens a wide realm of possibilities including toast, sandwiches, toasted sandwiches, and a new integrated circuit medium that could potentially increase the processing power of the Celeron processor by as much as 10 fold.
Lead researcher Helmar Ackmedsteinski states, "though the possibilities are endless, we are at least 10 years away from any viable toasting technology".
Though toast may not be in our near future, rumors have surfaced that new Celerons are on the way and will be in stores in time for Chirstmas. They are calling it the Celeron T.
"...188.5 million Americans and more than 1 billion people globally are online."
And here I thought I was the only one!
This too, will end.
>> I bet you'd struggle to find one in 50 who had ever even written a hello world in qbasic, one in 500 who could do the same in C
And what has that to do with a person's ability to use a computer as a teaching aid? If they're supposed to be teaching computing then sure; if they're just supposed to be *teaching*, though, and are using the computer as another tool, like exercise books and a blackboard are tools, then what does it matter? As long as they *can* use it, they should be fine.
In my day, we had to make our own blackboards before we could teach, then go out to the chalk cliffs and hew our own writing materials from the rock face. We had to cut down our own trees, shred them, soak the fibers in water, dry them and bind them if we wanted books. Then our ma and pa would beat us to death with a broken bottle and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
The down side was we never had any time to learn about the subjects we were meant to be teaching but we sure as hell understood how a blackboard worked.
Tell young'uns that today and they won't believe you.
1998 called, they want there article back.
Next up:
A whole generstion of people have been raised around automobiles, or as the kids call them 'cars'.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is bullshit, using AIM and typing 'OMG LOL!!!!111!1' does not make anyone tech savvy. They might not be as afraid of the computer, but they are no more cluefull then any other average person.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
There are some other faults with the networked/digital classroom.
Powerpoint. I swear, PPT presentations make me more ignorant of the material. Professors just go wild with them, adding little obnoxious photos and animated borders, yet the entire "presentation" is about a page of text. Worse, most profs seem to do this for the sake of technology, as if having a projector in the room means they have no choice but to make useless powerpoint presentations.
Some even abuse it, treating powerpoint as their personal publishing house with terrible results. There's a reason why they won't publish your textbook, ya know.
The digital campus gets a bit ironic in a way when students have to print out all these files from various locations thus getting even farther away from the so-called paperless solution.
When I first went to school we had books, lectures, notes, and labs (depending on the class). Now I have to print out all sorts of powerpoints, which are considered notes, take notes on the "notes," watch teaching skills fly out the window as profs just click the mouse and repeat bullet points like marketing execs, bring a laptop with me if I want to do anything productive, etc.
I'm sure there's a good middle ground, but right now it seems computers in the classroom are still in the gimmick stage. The real advatages are outside the classroom, like websites with class info, grades, etc. Inside, its a mess.
broadband okay, web logs, perhaps, downloading music & sharing photos shutup and study.
Breathing remains a popular pastime for the majority of today's youth.
in still other news, scientists have discovered that trees are made of wood
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
it was supposed to be i heart geeks but it takes the carrot part of the heart as html.... grr... i thought it wouldnt since i dont have another one... oh well. but yah ur all wonderful ^_^
"if only i had known i would have been a locksmith." -albert einstein
Nice try Oligonicella. We see right through your AC post.
No shit?
--- sig moved for great justice.
Reminds me of the horrendous results often had by sitting someone down in front of an early model Macintosh, with a LaserWriter parked right next to it. "Cool....12 fonts on a single page!" It made me appreciate the role that typesetters/layout designers play in the world of written communication.
Of course now, many of them have usurped the computer screen (especially when it comes to the web), mistakenly believing that it's a direct substitute for the printed page. No matter where you look, there's a lot of "punishment" going on...and the culprits range anywhere from relative novices, to seasoned professionals.
Hi, All I've been a techie almost my whole life. I'm 54 and have been tinkered with just about everything. The only thing I don't have a heavy interest in is bio-med (Not likely anything I could tinker with);-) My grandmother grew up in Oklahoma and moved to Washington State as a young woman. She saw the world change from horse and buggies to landing men on the moon. She was smart and alive. She had seen wars, dust bowl OK, fashions, the depression, the new deal, paradigm shifts and people come and go. She drove a truck during WWII and quit driving after that. It just didn't interest her. She was her own person and refused to be manipulated by pop culture or others opinions. Myself, I've worked on computers since "core memory". Back when as a tech you had to know how to use machine code on front panel switches to boot up a down system and write in assembly language to fix a utility. I've raced sailboats, flown bush planes, and made all forms of radical and some dangerous devices. I used to race my motorcycle at speeds that make people wet themselves, ski extreme moguls, rock climb, etc. I did all the excess, extreme and stupid things you could imagine. I found Jesus at 26. I have almost been killed five times (that's just the times I progressed into unconsciousness) and didn't think I'd live to see thirty. All this is just to say I didn't sit on my butt my whole life. I also enjoy the Internet. I have created programs in basic, COBOL and FORTRAN not to mention in assembly language. When I was hot and heavy in the mainframe business, I used to get so burned out on tech that I would only wear an analog self-winding watch and refused to do my math with a calculator. Those were the days of sailing and skiing, etc. We choose what we can endure. It is true that a lot of older people don't really have an interest in spending hours upon end in video games. My eight-year-old even has a threshold (a high one). Computers only became popular when they became Internet appliances. The tech is going to go places you can only imagine. I've seen all the promises and watched real progress. We use TV to live vicarious lives wishing if only. Some people use computers the same way. But what I see for a few is using Internet appliances to experience real life. You ever been surfing in California? Imagine your wireless wrist pda with retinal write sunglasses. Anything any time your way. Broad band everywhere. You could be on your board waiting for the next good one and while your digital satellite link is analyzing the wave sets, you're talking to your girl friend. You could be snowboarding in Colorado giving your buddies live feed and bragging rights for a rad ride. I remember my first digital watch. It was possible to tell time using both hands instead of one (had to push the button). Now they come with GPS. When devices and services reach the point where they become intuitive and machines conform to us versus the other way around. When technology becomes invisible... Until then it's going to be the domain of us techies with others holding on for their lives. It is interesting that in Kenya many of the Masai tribesmen who left village life (some even getting college degrees) returned to their tribal ways. They felt more of a sense of being alive following traditional ways. It's really a kick seeing mud huts primitive weapons, livestock and children running around naked and the biggest kick knowing these peoples backgrounds is seeing traditional tribal dress on the men and them wearing modern electronic wrist watches. Cultures and individuals that are wise pick only the things they regard of value and ignore the rest. Rant finished, fmhuff