Slideshow: Tech trends, library stats, and how teens do research
Research Analyst Kathryn Zickuhr gave a presentation at the Westchester Library Association’s annual conference that touched on a lot of our recent findings on library use, as well as a broad overview of technology adoption among adults and teens and a quick look at how teens do research in the digital age. Take a look at her comprehensive slideshow.
“Overall, what would you say is the most NEGATIVE aspect of students today being able to conduct research online?”
(Source: pewinternet.org)
The perceived impact of the internet on student research, in a word:
“Overall, what would you say is the most POSITIVE aspect of students today being able to conduct research online?
A survey of Advanced Placement & National Writing Project teachers finds that teens’ research habits are changing in the digital age. They say the internet & digital search tools have had a “mostly positive” impact on their students’ research work, but are creating an “easily distracted generation with short attention spans”. Check out the full, detailed report, out today: http://pewrsr.ch/Ujc6yh
(Source: pewinternet.org)
New report: For the first time, half of seniors use the internet. As of April 2012, 53% of American adults age 65 and older use the internet or email. Though these adults are still less likely than all other age groups to use the internet, the latest data represent the first time that half of seniors are going online. After several years of very little growth among this group, these gains are significant.
A great report out yesterday from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that cable leads the pack as the campaign news source, and Facebook and Twitter play only modest roles. Fewer Americans are closely following news about the presidential campaign than four years ago.
Also of note: 68% say they prefer to get political news from sources that do not have a political point of view, compared with just 23% who prefer news from sources that share their point of view. (via)
An interesting segment with Pew Senior Researcher Mary Madden on teenage behavior in regards to privacy, but one thing really caught my attention. Madden at around 1:46,
But they also have a variety of ways to customize and cloak their messaging on social media. Teens use private messaging channels, they use slang, they use jokes that may only be understood by peers. So just because someone is posting something broadly to a network it may not actually be intended for everyone in the network.
In case you missed it, be sure to check out Mary Madden’s discussion of teens, privacy, and social network sites with Brooke Gladstone in last week’s On the Media here.
PS: The findings Mary discussed are from a larger report about teens’ positive and negative experiences on social media; the full report is available (for free!) on our website.
New Report: 58% of all adults say they go online for no particular reason other than to pass the time or have fun
Americans are increasingly going online just for fun and to pass the time. On any given day, 53% of all the young adults ages 18-29 go online for no particular reason except to have fun or to pass the time. Many of them go online in purposeful ways, as well. But the results of a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project show that young adults’ use of the internet can at times be simply for the diversion it presents. Indeed, 81% of all young adults in this age cohort report they have used the internet for this reason at least occasionally.
These results come in the larger context that internet users of all ages are much more likely now than in the past to say they go online for no particular reason other than to pass the time or have fun. Some 58% of all adults (or 74% of all online adults) say they use the internet this way. And a third of all adults (34%) say they used the internet that way “yesterday” – or the day before Pew Internet reached them for the survey. Both figures are higher than in 2009 when we last asked this question and vastly higher than in the middle of the last decade.
Among teen social media users:
Read more in our recent report: Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites.
Our latest report takes a quick but informative look at why Americans use social media:
Two-thirds of online adults (66%) use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or LinkedIn. These internet users say that connections with family members and friends (both new and old) are a primary consideration in their adoption of social media tools. Roughly two thirds of social media users say that staying in touch with current friends and family members is a major reason they use these sites, while half say that connecting with old friends they’ve lost touch with is a major reason behind their use of these technologies.
Other factors play a much smaller role—14% of users say that connecting around a shared hobby or interest is a major reason they use social media, and 9% say that making new friends is equally important. Reading comments by public figures and finding potential romantic partners are cited as major factors by just 5% and 3% of social media users, respectively.
The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism looked at how mainstream media outlets use Twitter.
A new report from PEJ, based on analysis of more than 3,600 tweets over the course of a week, finds that news organizations use “Twitter primarily as an added means to disseminate their own material.” Read more in the full report at journalism.org.
From our new report: Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites
Part 2: What teens experience and how they behave on social network sites
The majority of teens have positive online experiences, but some are caught in an online feedback loop of meanness and negative experiences:
When we asked them to describe how people act online, the results were pretty negative:
…but the teens who were asked about how they thought people should act online gave responses that were substantially more positive:
From our new report: Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites - Teens and social network sites
We have a huge new report out today about how teens navigate interactions on social network sites and Twitter. It’s a big report, and covers a lot of ground—the above infographics are just from the first section, an overview of how many teens are on social media, who they are, and what they do there. More to follow…
by danah boyd, Eszter Hargittai, Jason Schultz, and John Palfrey, First Monday.
You can read the full article at the link above, or read danah’s blog post summarizing the results at the Digital Media and Learning Blog.
Half of Adult Cell Phone Owners Have Apps on Their Phones
Our latest report explores recent trends in app downloads: Who uses apps? What do they download? Who pays for apps—and how much? Read more…
The Project for Excellence in Journalism (a fellow Pew Research project) and The Economist Group have collaborated on the most comprehensive and detailed analysis to date of tablet users and how they get news on their tablets: To what extent are people using their tablets for news rather than other activities? Are they getting more news now than before they had their tablets?
The multi-phase study of nearly 1,200 tablet users and nearly 900 tablet news users offers unprecedented findings on many questions, and will be available on www.journalism.org on Tuesday, October 25.
These are the tumblings of the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project (Pew Internet for short). We study how Americans use the internet and technology in their daily lives. You can browse our (free!) reports—and steal our data—at pewinternet.org.
This is a bit of an experiment, so we'd love to hear from you. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, thoughts, or adorable cat photos, please let us know!
Hello! Thanks for inquiring, and we’re glad you find out work useful.
We usually do offer a few...
Morning sharing session at the @istrategylabs retreat
Earthlings around the world turned their eyes to the sky yesterday to watch...
While there is no evidence...
