Born to be Wired

By Kathleen Holder

Adam Barr, a political sciences senior, manages five Web sites and administers 15 campus and community e-mail lists. He writes a Web blog, with commentary on local and national issues.

He uses instant messaging to keep in contact with 187 people. He reads the California Aggie and British news on the Internet, listens to music—“all kinds”—on an iPod, regularly chats online and browses Facebook.com, a college directory and interactive yearbook, to keep up with old friends and make new ones.

For his 19-hour-a-week campus job, he shares his expertise with faculty—helping them use online course management tools, create PowerPoint presentations for their classes and create course Web sites.

And Barr considers himself a latecomer to information technology. Growing up in Santa Clarita, he had access to a typewriter but no computer at home. When he started high school, his grandmother bought a Packard Bell that he used for homework. “Most people I’ve talked to had a computer in grade school.”

Indeed, most students grew up with computers, and now they’re surrounded by technology. And that changes the way they study, write and think.

“I think this generation is different,” said Mark Stinson, manager of the campus Data Center and Client Services. “The way they’re learning is unique. That sort of linear learning you get when you read a book, that kind of logical argument that the previous generation had, has been replaced by a kind of holistic learning.

“Google changes everything,” Stinson said. “You can get information instantly on anything.”

And that instant access to information, according to many on campus, is creating high expectations for service on demand and around the clock. “I sometimes get two e-mails followed by a voice mail, saying ‘But I e-mailed you’—and it’s been two hours,” said Janice Morand, a coordinator for the Internship and Career Center.

Cell phones are everywhere on campus, and many students say they are the best way to reach them; some do not even have “landlines.” Students with laptops and a wireless connection can research and write term papers from their dorm room, the Memorial Union or a neighborhood cyber café—and never go to the library unless told to by their instructor. And they use online directories like Facebook, MySpace and Friendster to check each other out.

Whether growing use of technology hurts or helps students’ face-to-face communication is up for debate. Some veteran faculty and staff say students seem to have fewer social skills. Others say undergraduates are, in many ways, more sophisticated in their social interactions than ever before.

“It’s a different way of socializing,” said Barr, who maintained a long-distance relationship with a girlfriend for 18 months via cell phone and online conversations after meeting her online.

American studies professor Jay Mechling said students may send a text message inviting friends in the next room to go get pizza. But they don’t view that as a substitute for socializing, he said. “They don’t go out for virtual pizza with their friends. They go out for pizza with their friends.”

Sociology assistant professor Patrick Carroll said he is surprised students don’t worry about the potential misuse of technology—the dangers to privacy or civil rights. He also notes how adept they are at multitasking. “They’re very comfortable with the TV on and being on the cell phone, on the Internet chat room all at once,” Carroll said.

In the classroom, where students routinely use laptop computers, multitasking can pose challenges for faculty. “They seem to be taking notes,” American studies professor Jay Mechling said. “The trouble is they’re writing text messages to each other. Or they’ve split the screen and they’re doing both.”

Making a difference

Paying the way

Plays well with others

Helicopter parents

Stressed and depressed

A shift to the left

In the spirit

Beyond black and white

Where’s my job?

Return to introduction

Kathleen Holder is associate editor of UC Davis Magazine. David Owen and Joanna
Robinson contributed to these stories. Photos by Debbie Aldridge and Rachel Van Blankenship.