I spent a day at the British Library last week doing some background research on social media sort of stuff. I picked up a newsletter that amongst other things, referred to a report, Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future, written by CIBER at UCL.
The research challenges many areas of common wisdom about Gen Y:
- They are more comfortable with technology, but older users are catching up fast
- They have shifted decisively to texting vs talking (unproven)
- They multitask in all areas of their lives (unproven)
- They have zero tolerance for delay (no, older people are impatient too)
- They are expert searchers (no, this is a gangerous myth - digital and information literacies do not go hand in hand).
From my own experience, all of these behaviours still seem true, but I think this research is a useful check that they may not be as significant as we often, and some blogs would lead us to, think.