Adolescent Communication With Technology In and Out of School
Because this chapter addresses the use of technology for communication, we thought it might be interesting to compare adolescent patterns of communication in and out of school. Because it appears adolescents have more ubiquitous access to technology outside of school and this access may account for some of the differences in how they communicate in these different environments, we then describe “bring your own device” programs as one way to address the discrepancy in access.
Communication with peers is quite important to adolescents and they engage in such communication in a wide variety of ways. Data provided by the Pew Internet and American Life Project (Lenhart, Ling, Campbell & Purcell, 2010) offer insight into the extent of this commitment to communication and the relative degree to which different methods are used. Using a representative sample of adolescents (12-17 year olds), the researchers asked about the daily use of various methods for communicating with friends. The same survey was given in 2006 so trends over the period of short time period between 2006 and 2009 could be observed (see Figure 5.x). We cannot know whether any of these statistics surprise you or not, but the one finding that jumps out is the focus on “texting”. To adults from a different generation (us), it seems striking that adolescents claim to interact with their friends more frequently by texting than by face to face communication or by a phone call. Even among adolescents over the past few years, there has been a dramatic increase in texting as a means of communication. In fact, more specific data provided in the PEW report indicate that half of adolescents in the study now indicate that they send 50 or more text messages a day. Perhaps the more basic messages here are that communication is of great significance to adolescents, is accomplished in a variety of ways several of which involve technology, and several of the more popular uses involve activities often discouraged in a school setting.
Percent of adolescents who claim to contact their friends daily through various methods (2006 and 2009)
We were unable to locate matched data exploring how frequently students are involved in communication with technology in the school environment. The Department of Education data on the use of technology in schools offer some information (Gray, Thomas & Lewis, 2010). These data, which we have cited in several locations to describe frequency of technology use, are based on teacher perception of usage with the category indicating most frequent use labelled “sometimes or often”. There seem to be some areas of overlap with the PEW study on daily adolescent communication activities we have just described, but activity at the level of “sometimes” seem quite different than the PEW use of “daily”. Seven percent of teachers report that their students “sometimes or often” use social networking sites. Thirty-one percent of teachers claim their students “sometimes or often” use technology to “correspond with others”. Three percent of teachers instant message with students. Twenty-four percent of teachers “sometimes or often” use email to communicate with students to provide information - 30% use email to inform students of specific concerns.