Students Online: Time Wasters or Innovators?

February 1st, 2010 By: Diane Trim in Articles, Teachers' Corner

Your students are spending a lot of their free time online. Think of the number of hours you estimate they spend online. Double it. The doubled number is probably closer to the truth.

According to the Norton Online Living Report 2009, parents believe their children spend 21 hours online. The reality is that students in twelve countries reported spending 39 hours online. Don’t tell me these kids don’t have time to finish their assignments or clean their rooms.

Multitasking. Researchers for the Kaiser Family Foundation’s report, Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds, found that our students aren’t just watching YouTube or downloading from iTunes. When they’re on the ’Net, they’re likely to be IM-ing, texting, watching TV, or listening to their music players.

The Kaiser Family Foundation’s researchers found that rates of teen media use (TV, cell phones, computers, video games, audio, print, and movies) are up an hour and 17 minutes over teen media usage five years ago. A teen’s cell phone, smart phone, or gaming device is never out of arm’s reach.

“[…] cell phones and iPods have become true multi-media devices,” the study’s authors wrote. “In fact, young people now spend more time listening to music, playing games, and watching TV on their cell phones (a total of :49 daily) than they spend talking on them (:33).”

The authors of the Norton Online Living Report found that, “[…] six in 10 adults worldwide say kids spend ‘too much’ time online, and what’s more 45% of kids agree.”

Students as digital trailblazers. In another study from the Speak Up National Research Project, researchers disagree with parents and kids: students aren’t spending too much time online; students are the early adopters and adapters of new technology. Our students are not wasting time, they’re innovating. The authors write that our students are the “digital advance team,” the people who will lead educators and other adults into the technology age.

“The findings illustrate how K-12 students are leading the way in re-thinking education delivery and career exploration,” the study’s authors wrote. “These insights can be used to inform our nation’s education leaders in communities all across the United States, as they plan on how to use the stimulus funds for education effectively.”

The researchers believe that our students are ready and able to show adults how to use technology in innovative and educational ways; it’s our responsibility to take notes and make the kids’ 21st century technology ideas happen.

Online use and academic success. The problem is that when kids are online, they’re not likely to be doing school work. The Generation M2 report’s researchers found that students from all races and from all family education backgrounds spent an average of just 16 minutes online working on classroom assignments. Most of the time (25%), they hang out on social network sites, play online games (19%), watch YouTube or other videos (16%), and IM one another (13%).

The good news from these studies is that all of this online time and short hand text message language isn’t rotting students’ brains as much as we might think. The Generation M2 report’s researchers did find that 8- to 18-year-olds are spending five fewer minutes reading hard copies of books, magazines, and newspapers for pleasure than they did in six years ago. However, they’ve made up about two minutes of that deficit with online magazine or newspaper reading.

They also found that the same number of students who read for pleasure six years ago is about the same number who do so today. It’s also an activity that prohibits a lot of multitasking. Students might glance at the TV or play music in the background, but for the most part, when they read print, they are focused on their reading.

The Generation M2 report’s researchers also found that the time students spend online doesn’t affect their reading time. Heavy screen media users (16 or more hours a day) and light screen media users (less than two hours a day) read about the same amount of time: about 41 minutes a day. Even kids who watch TV all night long read about as much as those who don’t tune in much at all.

Students who have a TV in their bedrooms or live in homes where the TV is always on read less than other students, by about 10 minutes. Ten minutes might not seem much, but it’s a significant number that correlates to classroom achievement.

“Contrary to what is found for other media,” the Generation M2 report’s researchers wrote, “young people who are heavy readers (those who spend an hour or more per day with print media) are substantially more likely to say they earn high grades than those who are light readers (those who report no print reading on a typical day): 72% of heavy readers report high grades, compared to 60% of those in the light-reading group.”

Media use and well being. Not only do the heavy media users earn lower grades, but they’re not as happy as the kids who are offline. Of the light media users (fewer than three hours per day), 22% reported that they have a “high level of personal contentment,” the Generation M2 researchers found. On the opposite side, 20% of the heavy media users (more than 16 hours per day) reported that they had a “low level of personal contentment.”

Twenty-one percent of 8- to 18-year-olds are heavy media users. The problem is that we need to teach these kids to channel their media use. According to the Norton Online Living Report’s authors, parents know that they’re responsible for their children’s media use, but just 7 in 10 kids have rules. Thirty-three percent of the parents in the survey said that it’s hard to make media rules because so much new technology wasn’t around when they were kids.

The Norton Online Living Report researchers found that one in five students admitted they did something online that their parents wouldn’t approve. One-in-five students reported that their parents caught them, too.

“Supervision is inherently difficult when it comes to the online world,” the study’s authors wrote. “Not only is the Web’s content available to anyone with a search engine, it’s easy for kids to bypass parents altogether by logging on from outside the household.”

Educators have the tough job of balancing the curriculum with the students’ digital obsession, of incorporating 21st century skills with 21st century safety, and encouraging academic success in a world of media excess. I think we’re up to the challenge, but our role will be more to guide the digital natives with their technology use while they lead the way.

References:

“Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year Olds.” (2010) Kaiser Family Foundation. http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/8010.pdf Accessed January 26, 2010

“Norton Online Living Report.” (2009) Symantec Corporation. http://www.nortononlineliving.com/documents/NOLR_Report_09.pdf Accessed January 21, 2010.

“Selected National Findings: Speak Up 2008 for Students, Teachers, Parents and Administrators.” (2009.) Project Tomorrow. http://www.tomorrow.org Accessed December 8, 2009.

Tags: achievement, Adolescent Development, assignments, cell phones, computer, digital, digital natives, grades, media, online, parents, reading, research, safety, study, Technology in the Classroom