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The "Google Generation" myth

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Barb

Barb

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Interesting article from a tech blog at the New Scientist website:
A bunch of sources are reporting on a University College London study into how people born after the arrival of the internet - sometimes dubbed the Google generation - handle information. The top line is, they're not very good at it.

Although skilled at quickly searching for information they are bad at processing it, the study concludes, mentioning their "impatience in search and navigation, and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs". This worries the researchers who say libraries and educational institutions have to react.

An important issue. But I am more interested in knowing what, if anything, the Google generation are better at. It seems fair to say that their unprecedented technological environment will have made them think in different ways. So what abilities does growing up in a connected world enhance?

My first guess is that one example is multi-tasking - since the internet and communication technologies encourage you to stretch yourself across many activities.

Can any readers shed any more light on what the "Google generation" may excel at that older folk can't do so well? And what might newborns today - the "Web 2.0 generation" perhaps - be able to do that oldsters born before the web never will?
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Interesting and plausible - with the possibility of having information perpetually at your fingertips, is there any more incentive to actually commit things to memory? But then again we're not really at that stage yet.
 
That guy could've been born before the internet. Odds are he'd still be a dumbass, though.

I think this study is very accurate. You see people in classes supposed to be reading a book for an assignment, and they pull up the plot-summary from wikipedia as soon as they get home.

What do you guys think are the implications for people who, being born after the internet, still grew up without it. In my case, the internet is my primary source of information, but I'll still read the book.
 
Oh, I'd pull up the plot summary for anything first. I don't like surprises, see. But I would still read the book (assuming I had bought it) / watch the episode/movie afterwards.
 
Æsahættr said:
I think this study is very accurate. You see people in classes supposed to be reading a book for an assignment, and they pull up the plot-summary from wikipedia as soon as they get home.
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How is that any different than ye olde Cliff's Notes that, seemingly, everyone in my high school depended on? People always look for the easy way out. Now it's just a click away instead of a mile away.
 
That's so true. I'm currently writing, or will be writing soon, a History essay. Thing is, this paper is kind of important so I decided to do my research, get this, before I actually started typing. This has to be the first time in my high school years I didn't look up something on the internet (I'm actually reading books for this essay) as I was typing it into my essay.
 
I see this in my kids. They're much more visually oriented that I was. Everything is pictures: internet, television, video games....they own books, but they hardly read them.
 
GrnMarvl13 said:
How is that any different than ye olde Cliff's Notes that, seemingly, everyone in my high school depended on? People always look for the easy way out. Now it's just a click away instead of a mile away.
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It's Spark Notes, now.


And, having Asperger's Syndrome, which causes me to compulsively memorize everything, if this report is true....


ASPIES WILL RULE THE WORLD.
 
Barb said:
I see this in my kids. They're much more visually oriented that I was. Everything is pictures: internet, television, video games....they own books, but they hardly read them.
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I've always considered books to be visual media as well--you use your eyes to process them, right?
And the internet isn't always pictures. In fact it's mostly text, and you even use text to *post* pictures. You use text for everything online, including pictures.

But anyway, is that really a downside? Books are a way of getting a message across, and does the delivery matter as long as the message is preserved? Does it matter if those words are on a page or on a screen if they're the same words?
 
Blackjack Palazzo said:
But anyway, is that really a downside? Books are a way of getting a message across, and does the delivery matter as long as the message is preserved? Does it matter if those words are on a page or on a screen if they're the same words?
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The main issue comes from the impatience thing; which is why books are being compared to the web. I mean on one hand, you Google what you need, and, most of the time, you get it. With a book you actually have to read through and use your (gasp) brain to decide and weigh up the relevance of each bit of information before finding what you want.

The thing with the Google generation is that they have something quicker and easier that does the thinking for them. Most of the time, all they need is a thesaurus to change the words and they're done.
 
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Books are somewhat of a visual media, but you're relying more on your imagination as to descriptions of places and people than your eyes.
 
It's hardly a myth we're talking about. More a story that will be accepted by the majority of the world's population as fact within the next few decades.
 
Books won't go out of fashion, at least fiction books won't. Sure, in the future they all may be virtual books, but they will still force people to read. I have a hard time believing that good ol' stories and classic novels will leave us anytime soon.

Encyclopedias and newspapers though? I don't think they will last long when the internet is updating with new news and information every second.
 
With a book you actually have to read through and use your (gasp) brain to decide and weigh up the relevance of each bit of information before finding what you want.
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Except you have to do that with information from web sites too. You still have to write the papers yourself, and if you don't, they have ways of catching you.

Books are somewhat of a visual media, but you're relying more on your imagination as to descriptions of places and people than your eyes.
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Text is text though, be it on a screen or on a paper page.
 
But the pictures aren't usually the entire story, they're there to enhance the story. Like in Winnie the Pooh--it's text, but with the occasional picture as enhancement.
 
Blackjack Palazzo said:
But the pictures aren't usually the entire story, they're there to enhance the story. Like in Winnie the Pooh--it's text, but with the occasional picture as enhancement.
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There's quite a difference between Winnie the Pooh and a Tale of Two Cities.
 
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