Archive notice: This article was originally published on April 24, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Contrary to the widespread belief that today’s teenagers live online and absorbed the new technological possibilities with their mothers’ milk, a current study by Sheffield University http://www.shef.ac.uk, shows that many young users conduct only very superficial research on the web and, at best, skim content. Many simply do not know how to use search engines or show no interest at all in using new technologies.
Young people often spend only a few minutes reading academic articles, and only a few return to a particular contribution a second time. “It seems as though they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense,” say the study’s authors. According to the investigation, however, the tendency towards superficial, imprecise research is evident not only among young people but right up to the professors themselves. It was often initially assumed that online searching was second nature to teenagers and that they could handle the technical tools. Apparently, however, most are merely familiar with sites such as Facebook or Wikipedia but lack sound knowledge.
“I find that students’ expectations of online research are usually greater than the information they actually obtain from it,” says Max Schmidt, chairman of the Bavarian Philologists’ Association (bpv). According to the study, many young people cannot distinguish between blog posts and well-founded information. Schmidt also confirms this fact: “The private opinion of some other user often cannot be distinguished from academic information.” Students are also not accustomed to checking several sources, but apparently usually settle for the first result they find.
It is also striking that around 20 percent of young users are considered so-called “digital dissidents”, who want nothing to do with computing and think the computer is something for their father but not for their own generation. A further 57 percent do not boycott the Internet, but do not make much use of it either. In future, it will be important for young people to learn the proper use of new technologies so that they can use them adequately at all. Schools have so far offered little in this direction. “Usually, handling things such as online research is incorporated into computer science classes at the discretion of the individual teacher,” Schmidt explains. At least in Bavaria, however, this is set to change in future with the introduction of special seminars on the subject.
