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08/06/2010

In purely statistical terms, it appears that ever-greater proportions of young people's days are focused on technology. According to a recent study carried out by the Stuttgart-based media research group MPFS, 98 percent of 12- to 19-year-olds in Germany now have access to the Internet. And by their own estimates, they are online for an average of 134 minutes a day -- just three minutes less than they spend in front of the television.

However, the raw figures say little about what these supposed digital natives actually do online. As it turns out, the kids of today are very similar to previous generations of young people: They are mainly interested in communicating with their peers. Today's young people spend almost half of their time interacting socially online. E-mail, instant messaging and social networking together accounts for the bulk of their Internet time.

For instance Tom, one of Jetlir's classmates, remains in touch with 30 or 40 of his friends almost around the clock. Even so, the channels of communication vary. In the morning Tom will chat briefly on his PC, during lunch recess he'll rattle off a few text messages, after school he'll sit down for his daily Facebook session and make a few calls on his cell phone, and in the evening he'll make one or two longer video calls using the free Internet telephony service Skype.

The Medium Is Not the Message

For Tom, Jetlir, and the others of their age, it doesn't seem to matter whether they interact over the Internet or via another medium. It seems that young people are mainly interested in what the particular medium or communication device can be used for. In the case of the Internet in particular, that can be one of many things: Sometimes it acts as a telephone, sometimes as a kind of souped-up television. Tom spends an hour or two every day watching online videos, mostly on YouTube, but also entire TV programs if they're available somehow. "Everyone knows how to find episodes of the TV series they want to watch," says fellow pupil Pia.

The second most popular use of the Internet is for entertainment. According to a survey conducted by Leipzig University in 2008, more young people now access their music via various online broadcasting services than listen to it on the radio. As a consequence, the video-sharing portal YouTube has become the global jukebox, serving the musical needs of the world's youth -- although its rise to prominence as a resource for music on demand has gone largely unnoticed. Indeed, there are few songs that cannot be dredged up somewhere on the site.

"That's also practical if you're looking for something new," Pia says. Searching for specific content is incredibly simple on YouTube. In general all you need to do is enter half a line of some lyrics you caught at a party, and YouTube supplies the corresponding music video and the song itself.

In this way the Internet is becoming a repository for the content of older media, sometimes even replacing them altogether. And youthful audiences, who are always on the lookout for something to share or entertainment, are now increasingly using the Internet to find this content. But it's not exactly the kind of behavior that would trigger a lifestyle revolution.

Teens Still Enjoy Meeting Friends

What's more, there's still plenty of life beyond the many screens at their disposal. A 2009 study by MPFS found that nine out of every 10 teenagers put meeting friends right at the top of their list of favorite non-media activities. More striking still, 76 percent of young people in Germany take part in sport several times a week, although among girls that figure is only 64 percent.

In January, the authors of the "Generation M2" survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation published the remarkable finding that even the most intense media users in the US exercised just as much as others of their age.

So how can they pack all that into a single day? Simply adding together the amount of time devoted to each activity creates a very false picture. That's because most young people are excellent media multitaskers, simultaneously making phone calls, checking out their friends on Facebook and listening to music. And it appears that they're primarily online at times they would otherwise spend lounging around.

"I go online when I have nothing better to do," Jetlir says. "Unfortunately that's often when I should already be sleeping." Thanks to cell phones and MP3 players, young people can also fill gaps in their busy schedules even when they're away from static media sources like TVs, computers and music systems. Media use can therefore increase steadily while still leaving plenty of time for other activities.

'Time's Too Precious'

What's more, many young people still aren't the least bit interested in all the online buzz. Some 31 percent of them rarely or never visit social networking sites. Anna, who attends the same school as Jetlir, says she would "probably only miss the train timetable" if the Internet ceased to exist, while fellow student Torben thinks "time's too precious" to waste on computers. He plays handball and soccer, and says "10 minutes a day on Facebook" is all he needs.

By contrast, Tom will occasionally get so wrapped up in Facebook and his instant messaging that he'll forget the time altogether. "It's a strange feeling to realize you've spent so much time on something and have nothing to show for it," he admits. But he also knows that others find the temptations of the virtual world much harder to resist. "Everyone knows a few people who are online all day," Pia says, though Jetlir suggests that's only for want of something better to do. "None of them would turn down an offer to go out somewhere instead," he adds.

But even the most inveterate netizens aren't necessarily natural experts in the medium. If you want to make use of the Internet, you first have to understand how the real world works. And that's often the sticking point. The only advantage that young people have over their elders is their lack of inhibitions with regard to computers. "They simply try things out," says René Scheppler, a teacher at a high school in Wiesbaden. "They discover all sorts of things that way. The only thing is they don't understand how it works."

'I Found It on Google'

Occasionally the teacher will ask his students big-picture questions about the medium they take for granted. Questions like: Where did the Internet come from? "I'll get replies like, 'What do you mean? It's just there!'" Scheppler says. "Unless they're prompted to do so, they never address those sorts of questions. For them it's like a car: All that matters is that it works."

And because teenagers are basically inexperienced, they are all the more likely to overestimate their own abilities. "They think they're the real experts," Scheppler says. "But when it comes down to it, they can't even google properly."

When Scheppler scheduled a lesson about Google to teach his pupils how to better search the Web, they thought it was hilarious. "Google?!" they gasped. "We know all about that. We do it all the time. And now Mr Scheppler wants to tell us how to use Google!"

He, therefore, set them a challenge: They were to design a poster on globalization based on the example of Indian subcontractors. Now it was the teacher's turn to laugh. "They just typed a series of individual keywords into Google, and then they went click, click, click: 'Don't want that! Useless! Let's try another one!'" Scheppler recalls. "They're very quick to jettison things, sometimes even relevant information. They think they can tell the wheat from the chaff, but they just stumble about -- very rapidly, very hectically and very superficially. And they stop the moment they get a hit that looks reasonably plausible."

Few have any idea where the information on the Web comes from. And if their teacher asks for references, he often gets the reply, "I found it on Google."

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• Part 1: The Internet Generation Prefers the Real World
• Part 2: In Touch with Friends around the Clock
• Part 3: Learning How to Use the Internet Productively