Amherst Study: 1% Of Entering Freshmen Have Landlines; 99% Have Facebook Accounts
from the sign-o'-the-times dept
Here's an interesting little factoid pointed out by Clive Thompson that, while not surprising, does quickly indicate some major shifts on college campuses from just a few years ago. A report from Amherst on the technology used by entering freshmen in the class of 2012 found that only 1% have a landline phone, while 99% have Facebook accounts. Also, students arriving on campus registered, on average, more than one electronic device per student on the university's network. And, it would appear that the concept of the desktop computer is pretty much dead among students. Only 14 out of 438 students brought one.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: amherst, college students, desktop computers, landlines, social networks, technology
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I no longer own a CD player (other than the one that came in my car) and I actually just donated my CD collection (over 120 CDs) to charity, not because I'm generous but because no body wanted them.
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Wow
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Re: Wow
For those using VoIP, it is great until you lose electrical power and your battery dies.
It may be "old" technology, but like the "Energizer Bunny" it keeps working and working. Of course, this assumes that one's POTS is not wireless. Kinda hard to charge a handset when electrical power is knocked out for a few days to several weeks.
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On buying a desktop
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Re: Guy from Florida
I keep a landline because I have a 4 year old who knows how to pick up a phone and push 9-1-1. Lets keep it simple.
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Uh, which is why, in the title I said "Amherst study" and in the post itself I said "A report from Amherst on the technology used by entering freshmen in the class of 2012."
Can you point to where I said it applied to other colleges, because I did not.
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Re: Amherst vs Amherst College
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Vinyl
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How is this news?
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Fairly Obvious
As for the desktop v. laptop data: this I do find surprising. I thought lots of young boyzz were gamers. Can't be a serious gamer on a laptop, can you? Does this mean that gaming for this generation is all on consoles? I dug into the linked articles, but there is little detail on game consoles, other than the fact that they figured into the mix of devices that were connected to the network.
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Re: Fairly Obvious
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Survey's are useless information
Didn't read the article because I don't care, but it only looks like "438 students" took the survey to begin with. Amherst seems to be a very small private college of about 2000 students total and specializes in liberal arts. Therefore, a non-technical shcool where almost every student needs a 4.0 or better to even get accepted probably isnt going to concern themselves much with the use of a computer beyond typing up their latest research paper, and visiting social notworking sites. And, because they get to spend the rest of eternity paying off their student-laons, they probably don't need an extra bill for $25m to have another means of contacting people.
The only usefull information this survey can provide is reinforcing what is already known, technology that enables an individual to partake in or access areas of interest more readily and easily is going to be popular, and the oboslete technology is going to die off.
If I were a student at this college I'd do a survey about how many of my teachers or admistrators were doing similarlly uneeded tasks that waste time, money, and resources that could be put to much greater use.
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Re: Survey's are useless information
Actually, it's not a survey. It's based on data from the campus tech department, based on how many devices were registered on the network and how many landlines were ordered.
The Facebook numbers were based on Facebook.
So... the rest of your post is meaningless. You bitch and complain about a survey when this was not a survey.
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Desktops rock
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