Google Generation a Myth

I love it when I come across articles that tear down the whole notion of the "digital native":

The report, Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future, found users "power-browsing" or skimming material, using "horizontal" (shallow) research. Most spent only a few minutes looking at academic journal articles and few returned to them. "It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense," said the report authors.

But this behaviour was not restricted to "screenagers". "From undergraduates to professors, people exhibit a strong tendency towards shallow, horizontal, flicking behaviour in digital libraries. Factors specific to the individual, personality and background are much more significant than generation."

Let this be a lesson to those who like to think that today's youth are essentially aliens endowed with a natural facility for navigating digital information. Hurumph!

Being a media studies person and a lover of history, you learn that over time, modalities change, but human capacities rarely do. What makes the case of digital media engagement tricky is that while on the one hand it uses the same raw materials for communication we've used since the printing press -- pictures and words -- on the other hand, it promises new ways of interacting with them. In groups, rarely alone, information at your fingertips, yet often physically isolated and spiritually shallow.