The New York Times just printed an interesting article on the ways in which technology - and the ever increasing pace of change that comes concordant with that - might be affecting our children. This is interesting in and of itself. We might wonder how our children's malleable young minds are shaped by the cacophony of media they are exposed to, how their understanding of the world might shift as they inhabit more and more time in electronic and online activities, and how the absence of many of the influences of the past might shape their development. Already we see some differences - younger generations expect information immediately, seem to have less privacy concerns and are better at multitasking than older adults. These changes may not be all good. For example, the increase in multitasking could potentially have negative effects on the ability to focus on materials for longer periods of time - such as is needed in schooling.
But there's another issue that has to do more with the increasing pace of change rather than the actual experiences themselves. We'll be talking about research methods tomorrow, and we'll be discussing types of studies that utilize what are called "developmental designs". I know you'll be excited to learn about won't really have a choice but to listen to me talk about cross-sectional, longitudinal and sequential designs. All three of these are ways of looking at change over time. Cross-sectional designs focus on looking at a group of people of slightly different ages at one point in time, with the implicit assumption often being that by looking at the differently aged people, you can figure out what changes in development due to the effects of age. Longitudinal designs focus on a single group of people over time with the implicit assumption often being that that particular group of people should be illustrative of how development generally occurs in people outside of your specific study sample. We'll talk about why these assumptions are not always correct, but for now I will just note that sequential designs are an attempt to pin down the actual differences between age effects, cohort effects and time of measurement effects by basically combining longitudinal and cross-sectional designs.
But what happens when change gets really fast?
Researchers are exploring this notion too. They theorize that the ever-accelerating pace of technological change may be minting a series of mini-generation gaps, with each group of children uniquely influenced by the tech tools available in their formative stages of development.
“People two, three or four years apart are having completely different experiences with technology,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project. “College students scratch their heads at what their high school siblings are doing, and they scratch their heads at their younger siblings. It has sped up generational differences.”Already, we have to be careful in research to attend to which of our findings are driven by actual developmental change and not by cohort. What happens when cohorts shrink in size?
