"The Internet Goes to College"

Its true. Us college kids rely on our computers more than anything else. To communicate with our friends, our classmates, our teachers, and even our parents, the internet provides a speedy way to send and get the information we need.

The Article "The Internet Goes to College" from the Pew Internet and American Life Project didnt bring many surprises. For instance, it didnt shock me at all that 86% of college students have gone online, compared with the 59% of the general population.
I know that I depend on the internet to get in touch with friends, to contact my professors, and to submit assignments. But I also (and more frequently) use the internet in my spair time. In fact, if you walk into any dormroom on Duke's campus, you're most likely going to find someone on their computer.
We download and listen to music on itunes. We make fun of outrageous videos on youtube. We look up crazy facts on wikipedia. We friend eachother on facebook. We look at photoalbums. Now we even watch tv shows and movies in streaming HD.
And now, (if we can afford it) we can do any of this on a little handheld device and bring it anywhere we go.

With everything this easy, its no question why college kids demand more than our parents' generation. Diana Oblinger writes in her article "Boomers & Gen-Xers Millenials:Understanding the New Students" that "for today's learners, customer service is an expectation, not an exception." If our internet is going slow, we become outraged. If we dont get a response to our emails, we wonder what is wrong with the other person. If we order something online and it doesn't come in time, we refuse to shop there again. In short, we've become so used to speed, accessability, and customer service, that when we don't get exactly what we want we become enraged.

We all know that our grandparents 'hiked up hill in the snow everyday to get to school." In our age, we dont even have to leave the house. If we wanted, we could do all our learning in our pajamas on the couch, with our laptops purched on our laps.