Another factor in the mental/emotional roller coaster is the need for instant gratification. As younger generations become more accustomed to the immediate response and instant gratification that technology provides, we will become a nation of impatient humans who feel entitled to instant fulfillment. Even as adults, we demonstrate this impatience: Think about your reaction the last time the Internet froze or a webpage wouldn’t load. What fuels our love affair with streaming music and movies? How many people do you know that pay a significant yearly fee to an online retailer in order to get free two-day shipping any time they buy something? Even amusement parks will let you buy “skip the line” passes to avoid having to wait. But this impatience has an impact on our youth that can be devastating in the workforce. Graduates who have gotten used to immediate feedback in every aspect of their lives now have to enter the workforce or climb the corporate ladder that is riddled with failures, setbacks, and slow growth. How will they handle it? Are we preparing our future leaders to live in the real world, where change rarely happens overnight? What’s worse is that this desire for instant gratification can actually be physically addicting. “About 60% of 18- to 34-year-old respondents to a Pew Research Center survey said they sleep next to their cell phones so they don’t miss calls, texts or updates during the night” (Alsop, 2014). Instant gratification fuels our innate human pleasure principle and triggers a very real psychological response. We start to believe that we should instantly get a job, instantly fall in love, and instantly have success in life, and we end up with feelings of depression, rejection, and failure when we don’t get it.
The New Civil/Social Connection
The current generation is growing up socially and emotionally in a world driven by technology and screen time. The amount of time children and adults alike spend using electronic devices takes away from the traditional interactions that past generations once knew. Figure 3.1 shows us the growth in household Internet access from 1997 through 2015. Today, more than 77% of the nation uses the Internet in their homes. In fact, only 11% of U.S. adults do not use the Internet at all (Anderson, Perrin, & Jiang, 2018). Children’s access to electronic devices has grown tremendously, and they engage with screens almost all day long. It’s safe to say that families are not interacting and communicating with one another nearly as often as they were 20 years ago. And it’s not only families; children aren’t physically engaging with one another anymore. Technology has created an avenue for kids to stay in contact without ever having to see or speak to one another. In 2016, teenagers said they spend less than two hours a week socializing with friends outside of school, only one third of the time GenX students spent at parties in 1987 (Twenge, 2017). In 2010, teens between the ages of 12 to 17 reported using text messages more than any other form of communication, including face-to-face interaction (Lenhart et al., 2010). These days, many teens use Snapchat as their primary form of communication, citing several reasons for the app’s main appeal: the informality, the choice to use photos or text to communicate, and the ability to view friends’ stories (or not) with no obligation to reply (Godlewski, 2016).
All of this digital communication leads to young children who aren’t benefitting from the emotional cues, nonverbal cues, body language, and facial expressions that social interactions provide. Children who engage with one another in real life acquire the skills needed to form positive relationships and participate effectively in social situations. It helps them read the emotional context clues of the situation and make decisions to act accordingly. It allows them to develop their skills in the art of conversation making. “Teaching the younger generation the finer points of interpersonal skills is key to their long-term success. No matter how advanced technology becomes, landing a scholarship, job interview or fiancé will still require some form of verbal communication” (Fine 2017).
Figure 3.1 ■ Percentage of Households Using the Internet by Year
Source: Computer and Internet Use in the United States: Population Characteristics, Thom File. Issued May 2013: https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-569.pdf.
The demise of emotional recognition contributes to the rising trend of poor decisions adolescents and teens make when engaging with each other online. Approximately 39% of teens admit that they have posted something online that they regret and 25% have shared a profile with a false identity (“Is Social Networking Changing Childhood?,” 2009). Social media sites and online gaming profiles allow children to create alter egos or fictional identities to foster a level of anonymity that they feel protected by. It also provides a false sense of invincibility and distance that they believe will prevent them from being held accountable for their online actions. About 32% of teenagers who use the Internet say they have been targets of threatening messages, have had their private e-mails or text messages forwarded without consent, have had an embarrassing picture posted without permission, have had rumors about them spread online, or have experienced other forms of cyberbullying, with girls more likely to experience it than boys (Lenhart, 2007). The Internet has provided children with a platform to say whatever they want whenever they want without having to physically face the consequences of their words. It used to be that you could actually see the hurt in someone’s eyes when you were caught name-calling on the playground. Now you can close your eyes to it while the cyber world shuffles it around from person to person, destroying the target of your words with every click and forward.
Learner Benefits
Community Connections
Technology has been labeled as harmful to the development of social skills for obvious reasons: Students are texting instead of talking, and social media websites cannot compare to face-to-face communication. However, the benefits that digital resources have brought to social skills (in and out of school settings) should also not be ignored. Now, students can stay connected to anyone, any time, in any location, broadening the concept of community relations. That’s a pretty powerful benefit. Social media platforms provide students who feel socially awkward with a place to fit in and perhaps excel. Written communication can take away from the stresses that eye contact and verbal communication sometimes bring. In a sense, technology can be used to expand communication skills and build learner comfort, which is a notable benefit and can increase academic success.
How does technology affect a sense of community in a classroom setting? This will depend on the teacher. Digital resources can and should be used to build a community atmosphere. In order for this to occur, technological applications, consumptions, and deliveries cannot always take place with students working in isolation. Teachers must allow students to work together with partners or teams to magnify the advantages that technology provides. Combing class or whole-group projects with technology is also an effective strategy that can be used to strengthen a community connection. In Chapter 8, tech community connectors will be explored. Utilizing technology through interactive means is a strong approach for creating a cohesive community in any and all learning environments.
Personalized Technology
You may think with all the negative effects that technology has had on our students’ lives that we’d be against its current role in education and its upward usage trend. However, that is not the case. The value of technology in the classroom cannot be denied, and we’re not alone in our thinking. According to a CDW-G national survey, 86% of teachers agree that classroom computers improve student performance (Starr, 2003). The widespread inclusion of various forms of technology in the school setting has changed the way teachers teach and, thereby, the way students learn. From tablets to laptops to interactive whiteboards, technology