Born To Be Wired

Technology, Communication, and the Millennial Generation
Mark Greenfield, University at Buffalo

Historical Context

Theories of the Networked World

• The Death of Distance 2.0: Distance will no longer decide the cost of communicating electronically.
• The World Is Flat: The world has been flattened creating a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration.

The End of the Web As We Know It

• The mobile Web.
• Convergence.
• Read/write Web (blogs, wikis).
• End of the Web page paradigm.
• Users will aggregate their own content.
• Rich media.
• The World Network.

Millennial Generation

Who Are They?

• Born in 1980s and 90s.
• Also called: Generation Y, The Net Generation.
• Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation
  • Special: Vital to the nation and their parents sense of purpose.
  • Sheltered: Youth protection movement.
  • Confident: Their generation will change the world.
  • Team oriented: Tight peer bonds, shifted from I to we.
  • Conventional: Social standards make life easier.
  • Pressured: Trophy-kid pressure to excel.
  • Achieving: Best educated generation; teens have 5-year plans.

Attributes

• Ethnically-diverse.
• Focused on grades and performance.
• Respectful of norms and institutions.
• Peer pressure toward positive behavior.
• “Hypertext minds” that prefer to leap around.
• Intuitive visual communicators.
• Sharp break from the attitudes and behaviors of Generation X
  • Free agents > teamwork.
  • Apathy > political action.
  • Technology elevates the individual > technology elevates the community.

Millennials and Technology

• Technology is the very core of their existence.
• Carry an arsenal of devices.
• The Web is the hub for activities.
• Use the Web to create and share content.
• Staying is connected.
• Millennials are prolific communicators that reinforce social interaction
  • IM, text messaging.
  • Social networks (*facebook, friendster, orkut, meetup.com).
  • Smart mobs: Virtual grouping to perform a collective action.

Information Age Mindset

From Jason Frand

• Computers aren’t technology.
• The Internet is better than TV.
• Reality is no longer real.
• Doing rather than knowing.
• Games (Nintendo) over logic, trial and error approach to learning.
• Multi-tasking is a way of life.
• Typing is preferred to handwriting.
• Staying connected is essential.
• There is zero tolerance for delays.
• Consumer and creator are blurring.

Parents of Millennials

• Helicopter parents: Always hovering, ultra-protective, unwilling to let go.
• Parents will meddle and fuss if they don’t feel their special child is getting the best of everything.
• The parent-child co-purchase the education.
• Implications for FERPA: Make sure parents and students understand privacy.

Implications for Student Services

• Students and parents are customers who actively compare programs and make choices.
• A 24×7 customer service culture — always on, always connected, anytime, anywhere.
• Cyber service and instant response.
• Millennials accept authority and respect institutions, along with “zero tolerance” for institutional failure.

Is E-mail Losing Its Effectiveness

• People are unwilling to share their e-mail address.
• Spam filters intercept legitimate e-mail.
• Millennials prefer IM.
• Growth of alternate communications channels (RSS, blogs, text messaging).

Looking Ahead

• Five-year-old daughter spends more time on the computer than television.
• Has been asking for a cell phone since she was three years old.
• Cell phones are being marketed for elementary school children, with buttons for mom, dad, and three others. Some have GPS.

Evaluating Communications Technology

• Synchronous versus asynchronous.
• Push versus pull.
• Audience (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many).
• Social aspects (formal versus informal, anonymity, privacy, spontaneity).
• Cost.
• Single response or dialog.
• Searchability and archiving.

Instant Messaging

• Gartner predicts IM usage will pass e-mail for corporate communications.
• IM is more popular than e-mail for Millennials.
• Millennials often carry on several conversations at once, and have several screen names.
• System based on presence; people know when you’re on line.
• Synchronous communications.

RSS: Real Simple Syndication

• Engine driving the read/write Web.
• The power of syndication.
• User is in control.
• A new way to surf the Web and deal with information overload.
• Single feed versus multiple feeds: How detailed would the feeds be?
• Frequency of content updates: What is the threshold for deleting a feed, as they would delete an inactive bookmark?

Blogs

• Business Week: Blogs will change your business.
• Millennials prefer blogs over message boards.
• Persistence: You need frequent posts.
• Close the feedback loop: Activate comments, with approval stage.
• Become a blogger.

Blogs in Higher Education

• Student recruitment: Genuine, authentic look at the institution.
• Blogs in the classroom.
• Provide commentary and share expertise.
• Build community.
• Augment, replace listserv and electronic newsletters.
• UB is using WordPress.

What Makes Podcasting Special

• The power of RSS.
• TiVO.
• Proliferation of portable MP3 players.
• Coursecasting.

Wikis

• Operate on a principle of collaborative trust.
• Some estimate that wikis accelerate projects by 25 percent.

Looking Ahead

• Five-year-old daughter spends more time on the computer than television.
• Has been asking for a cell phone since she was three years old.
• Cell phones are being marketed for elementary school children, with buttons for mom, dad, and three others. Some have GPS.

Concluding Thoughts

• “Millennials Go to College:” Neil Howe and William Strauss.
• “The Cluetrain Manifesto.”
• “All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World.”
• “Naked Conversations.”