There’s a new paper out about Internet use among U.S. college students. It’s short and sweet (fully readable in one quick sitting). I tend to enjoy research studies that observe, record, and number-crunch as a phenomenon is happening. Seriously, I’m the one on the tour of Monticello who’s way more amped about what Jefferson was planting every year and what his household shopping lists consisted of than seeing yet another copy of the Declaration of Independence (not that I have anything against freedom).

Sometimes mankind has to work backwards, dig up the past and put the pieces back together so we can make sense of it all. Taking note of what’s happening today seems so obvious and uninteresting, but first- and second-hand in the present tends to be a tad more precise than having everyone try to recall what happened decades ago and then attempt to form a few good theories.

By “replicating and extending” their 2002 study, Steve Jones, Camille Johnson-Yale, Sarah Millermaier, and Francisco Seoane Pérez have found that U.S. college students are still all over that Internet action. Their usage has certainly increased since the 2002 study, especially as compared to non-college student Internet users in the U.S. The generation that was born with a keyboard at their fingertips is also, not surprisingly, faster than the rest of us at finding, understanding, and implementing new Internet applications and tools.

The paper was just accepted in September, and was published in the October 5th, 2009 edition of the online peer-reviewed journal, First Monday. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

While ours is not a traditional diffusion of innovations study, it is important to generate a broad, comprehensive portrait of Internet use amongst college students to understand what they are doing online and what the implications of their use may be for other Internet users.
This study therefore examines how college students are using the Internet, compares their use to that of college students as reported in 2002 and to the general population. To guide our comparisons to the findings of Jones’ 2002 report, we pose broad questions regarding student Internet use: What kinds of things are today’s college students doing online that are different than what students were doing five years ago? What points of similarity and difference can we identify between the role the Internet plays in students’ social routines now and in 2002? To what extent are college students using new online tools such as blogs, Facebook, and MySpace? Tracking the evolution of students’ Internet use can help to illuminate trends in online life and help us look forward as the Internet increasingly informs aspects of everyday life.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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