In class we learned that we, our generation, is commonly known in the tech world as the “Google Generation”. I found this interesting as I had never heard this term before but as an avid “Googler” myself I absolutely believed the title. I did some research as to what the Google Generation actually is because identifying it from a subjective view is difficult. For as much of my life as I can remember Google has been such a prominent, staple of daily life, but I never thought of it as a way to label an entire generation.

A journalist named Nate Anderson had some particularly interesting things to say about our Google Generation and the attributes that are included in it. He interestingly noted, “It’s true that young people prefer interactive systems to passive ones and that they are generally competent with technology, but it’s not true that students today are “expert searchers.” In fact, the report calls this “a dangerous myth.” Knowing how to use Facebook doesn’t make one an Internet search god, and the report concludes that a literature review shows no movement (either good or bad) in young people’s information skills over the last several decades. Choosing good search terms is a special problem for younger users.” I agree entirely with this. When Pipo was teaching us ways to search on Google I felt a somewhat disgrace to my generation that I’d been searching incorrectly for all these years. I felt unworthy of being deemed a part of the Google Generation but knew my friends, too, definitely did not know how to search in such an efficient manner.

So what exactly is true about the Google generation?

The British Library had a few characteristics noted such as…

• They like to cut-and-paste. “There is a lot of anecdotal evidence and plagiarism is a serious issue.”
• They prefer visual information over text. “But text is still important… For library interfaces, there is evidence that multimedia can quickly lose its appeal, providing short-term novelty.”
• They multitask all the time. “It is likely that being exposed to online media early in life may help to develop good parallel processing skills.”

I, personally, believe all those to be true. Whether or not they are necessarily good or bad things I can’t really say. Being brought up in this internet age society has made me somewhat biased or unclear as to it’s positives and negatives because it is so inherent in our growing up.