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2013 Survey regarding teens and technology

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2013 Survey regarding teens and technology

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Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech

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Smartphone adoption among American teens has increased substantially and mobile access to the internet is pervasive. One in four teens are "cell-mostly" internet users, who say they mostly go online using their phone and not using some other device such as a desktop or laptop computer. These are among the new findings from a nationally representative survey of 802 teens ages 12-17 and their parents which shows that:

78% of teens now have a cell phone, and almost half (47%) of those own smartphones. That translates into 37% of all teens who have smartphones, up from just 23% in 2011.

One in four teens (23%) have a tablet computer, a level comparable to the general adult population.

Nine in ten (93%) teens have a computer or have access to one at home. Seven in ten (71%) teens with home computer access say the laptop or desktop they use most often is one they share with other family members.

Mobile access to the internet is common among American teens, and the cell phone has become an especially important access point for certain groups:

About three in four (74%) teens ages 12-17 say they access the internet on cell phones, tablets, and other mobile devices at least occasionally.

One in four teens are "cell-mostly" internet users - far more than the 15% of adults who are cell-mostly. Among teen smartphone owners, half are cell-mostly.

Older girls are especially likely to be cell-mostly internet users; 34% of teen girls ages 14-17 say they mostly go online using their cell phone, compared with 24% of teen boys ages 14-17. This is notable since boys and girls are equally likely to be smartphone owners.

Among older teen girls who are smartphone owners, 55% say they use the internet mostly from their phone.

In overall internet use, youth ages 12-17 who are living in lower-income and lower-education households are still somewhat less likely to use the internet in any capacity - mobile or wired. However, those who fall into lower socioeconomic groups are just as likely and in some cases more likely than those living in higher income and more highly educated households to use their cell phone as a primary point of access.

About the survey

These findings are based on a nationally representative phone survey of 802 parents and their 802 teens ages 12-17. It was conducted between July 26 and September 30, 2012. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish and on landline and cell phones. The margin of error for the full sample is ± 4.5 percentage points. This report is the second in a series of reports issued in collaboration with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. The first release, "Teens, Parents and Online Privacy," was published in November 2012 and is available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/Reports/2012/Teens-and-Privacy.aspx.

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Smartphone adoption among American teens has increased substantially and mobile access to the internet is pervasive. One in four teens are "cell-mostly" internet users, who say they mostly go online using their phone and not using some other device such as a desktop or laptop computer.

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My blog about my Google Voice experience

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My blog about my Google Voice experience

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As a teacher on a 4x4 block system, I typically have about 90 students at a time. As a teacher on a traditional 7 block system, one can have about 150 students at a time. It is a slice of my proverbial work pie that I must work to know, see, speak with, and hear all of my student every day to the best of my ability.
Additionally, as a modern language teacher, I need to assess my students' speaking production on a regular basis. I have experienced that with a classroom of 25-30 students, it is difficult to give up that precious learning time, so that I can hear each student speak and give feedback.
This year, I experimented with a new tool that I believe will free up some of that time formally spent on speaking assessment. Much less often will my students sit and patiently (passively) wait for their turn at the language steering wheel. That new tool is Google Voice.

Old teaching practice: assign students a guided conversation task to role play with a partner with a set amount of time to prepare, assess their progress by having them perform that conversation in front of the class, enter grade in gradebook National Standards for Foreign Language Education:

Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions

Alabama Course of Study Languages Other Than English:

Modern Languages Level 1. 3.: Present oral and written information in the target language using familiar vocabulary and correct structure in the present time frame.

assign students a guided conversation task to role play with a partner, give students an allotted amount of time and then WHEN THEY ARE READY, they submit their speaking sample IN A PRIVATE SPACE with their cellphones using Google Voice, return to the classroom to WORK ON ANOTHER TASK while other students finish, assess their speaking samples when I choose, FORWARD STELLAR SAMPLES to parents of students using Gmail with a note of encouragement (Look! Your student is speaking German! Prima!), enter grade in gradebook
Last year, I was able to do this type of activity twice with German 2 students. Both times, it went so well, that it seemed too good to be true. Only a couple of technical glitches occurred, and I just asked those pairs to resubmit their speaking samples with no penalty. No complaints, no resistance, and the students were all engaged using the target language and technology. It's truly an administrator's dream. In fact, I tweeted about my first run with Google Voice on February 5th, which was Digital Learning Day (#DLDay). My instructional partner retweeted that, which then got retweeted by the Alabama State Superintendent of Education, Tommy Bice. (Apologies for the tooting of my horn, but I thought it was nice to having world language learning recognized at the state level!)

I'm now considering ways in which students can use Google Voice at another level. I'd like to see them use it for culture discussion, for example. Maybe at the end of a unit of Austrian culture, like this one about the city of Salzburg, students could speak for 2-3 minutes about the similarities and differences between Salzburg and their own hometown. For novice learners, I believe that this can totally be done in English. For intermediate to advanced learners, this can be done in German. For those students at all levels, who are continuing on to Advanced Placement, this is an excellent activity to prepare and vertical team for the Spoken Presentational portion of the exam.
Google Voice also allows opportunity to do collaborative work with other subjects and classrooms. At the end of the day, building COMMUNICATION skills should be a primary objective for all educators.

Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and communicative tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate.

For a clear and concise perspective on the value of podcasting and students submitting digital work, watch this video. I believe that it applies to this arena of students using Google Voice, as well.
During the past two years, I have developed several interdisciplinary units with colleagues in my building. What if at the end of a lesson, we assessed our students' understanding of the connections between the world language and culture class and the other subject area (science, math, ELA, music, art, etc.) using Google Voice? I think that it could be even more powerful than before.
I presenting to at my school district's professional development day on this topic, so I've created a Padlet wall with the resources that I have found to be most helpful with getting ready to use Google Voice in the classroom. If you know of any others that are good, please leave a comment and share!

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Cultural Comparisons and Contrasts: Utilizing Google Voice

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As a teacher on a 4x4 block system, I typically have about 90 students at a time. As a teacher on a traditional 7 block system, one can have about 150 students at a time.

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Step-by-step for set-up and ideas for use

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Step-by-step for set-up and ideas for use

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Find this page: DitchThatTextbook.com/voiceVoice through video responses with FlipgridFlipgrid: flipgrid.com (Use code "MATTMILLER" to try Flipgrid Classroom for free!)TONS of ways to u...

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2010 data regarding teens and cell phones

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2010 data regarding teens and cell phones

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Some 75% of 12-17 year-olds now own cell phones, up from 45% in 2004.

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Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech

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Text messaging explodes as teens embrace it as the centerpiece of their communication strategies with friends.
The mobile phone has become the favored communication hub for the majority of American teens.
Cell-phone texting has become the preferred channel of basic communication between teens and their friends, and cell calling is a close second. Some 75% of 12-17 year-olds now own cell phones, up from 45% in 2004. Those phones have become indispensable tools in teen communication patterns. Fully 72% of all teens - or 88% of teen cell phone users - are text-messagers. That is a sharp rise from the 51% of teens who were texters in 2006. More than half of teens (54%) are daily texters.

Among all teens, their frequency of use of texting has now overtaken the frequency of every other common form of interaction with their friends (see chart below).

Fully two-thirds of teen texters say they are more likely to use their cell phones to text their friends than talk to them to them by cell phone.
One in three teens sends more than 100 text messages a day, or 3000 texts a month.
Daily text messaging by teens to friends has increased rapidly since early 2008. Some 38% of teens were daily texters in February 2008, and that has risen to 54% of teens who use text daily in September 2009. Of the 75% of teens who own cell phones, 87% use text messaging at least occasionally. Among those texters:

Half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day, or 1,500 texts a month, and one in three send more than 100 texts a day, or more than 3,000 texts a month.

15% of teens who are texters send more than 200 texts a day, or more than 6,000 texts a month.

Boys typically send and receive 30 texts a day; girls typically send and receive 80 messages per day.

Teen texters ages 12-13 typically send and receive 20 texts a day.

14-17 year-old texters typically send and receive 60 text messages a day.

Older girls who text are the most active, with 14-17 year-old girls typically sending 100 or more messages a day or more than 3,000 texts a month.

However, while many teens are avid texters, a substantial minority are not. One-fifth of teen texters (22%) send and receive just 1-10 texts a day or 30-300 a month.

Calling is still a central function of the cell phone for teens and for many teens, voice is the primary mode of conversing with parents.
Among cell-owning teens, using the phone for calling is a critically important function, especially when it comes to connecting with their parents. But teens make and receive far fewer phone calls than text messages on their cell phones.

Teens typically make or receive 5 calls a day. White teens typically make or receive 4 calls a day, or around 120 calls a month, while black teens exchange 7 calls a day or about 210 calls a month and Hispanic teens typically make and receive 5 calls a day or about 150 calls a month.
Girls more fully embrace most aspects of cell phone-based communication.
As we see with other communicative technologies and applications, girls are more likely than boys to use both text messaging and voice calling and are likely to do each more frequently.

Girls are also more likely than boys to text for social reasons, to text privately, and to text about school work.

59% of girls text several times a day to "just say hello and chat"; 42% of boys do so.

84% of girls have long text exchanges on personal matters; 67% of boys have similar exchanges.

76% of girls text about school work, while 64% of boys text about school.

For parents, teens' attachment to their phones is an area of conflict and regulation.
Parents exert some measure of control over their child's mobile phone - limiting its uses, checking its contents and using it to monitor the whereabouts of their offspring. In fact, the latter is one of the primary reasons many parents acquire a cell phone for their child. However, with a few notable exceptions, these activities by parents do not seem to impact patterns of cell phone use by teens.

64% of parents look at the contents of their child's cell phone and 62% of parents have taken away their child's phone as punishment.

46% of parents limit the number of minutes their children may talk and 52% limit the times of day they may use the phone.

48% of parents use the phone to monitor their child's location.

Parents of 12-13 year-old girls are more likely to report most monitoring behavior.

Limiting a child's text messaging does relate to lower levels of various texting behaviors among teens - these teens are less likely to report regretting a text they sent, or to report sending sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude images by text (also known as "sexting").

Teens whose parents limit their texting are also less likely to report being passengers in cars where the driver texted behind the wheel or used the phone in a dangerous manner while driving.

Most schools treat the phone as a disruptive force that must be managed and often excluded from the school and the classroom.
Even though most schools treat the phone as something to be contained and regulated, teens are nevertheless still texting frequently in class.

12% of all students say they can have their phone at school at any time.

62% of all students say they can have their phone in school, just not in class.

24% of teens attend schools that ban all cell phones from school grounds.

Still, 65% of cell-owning teens at schools that completely ban phones bring their phones to school every day.

58% of cell-owning teens at schools that ban phones have sent a text message during class.

43% of all teens who take their phones to school say they text in class at least once a day or more.

64% of teens with cell phones have texted in class; 25% have made or received a call during class time.

Cell phones help bridge the digital divide by providing internet access to less privileged teens. Still, for some teens, using the internet from their mobile phone is "too expensive."
Teens from low-income households, particularly African-Americans, are much more likely than other teens to go online using a cell phone. This is a pattern that mirrors Pew Internet Project findings about adults and their cell phones.

21% of teens who do not otherwise go online say they access the internet on their cell phone.

41% of teens from households earning less than $30,000 annually say they go online with their cell phone. Only 70% of teens in this income category have a computer in the home, compared with 92% of families from households that earn more.

44% of black teens and 35% of Hispanic teens use their cell phones to go online, compared with 21% of white teens.

Cell phones are seen as a mixed blessing. Parents and teens say phones make their lives safer and more convenient. Yet both also cite new tensions connected to cell phone use.
Parents and their teenage children say they appreciate the mobile phone's enhancement of safety and its ability to keep teens connected to family and friends. For many teens, the phone gives them a new measure of freedom. However, some teens chafe at the electronic tether to their parents that the phone represents. And a notable number of teens and their parents express conflicting emotions about the constant connectivity the phone brings to their lives; on the one hand, it can be a boon, but on the other hand, it can result in irritating interruptions.
Cell phones are not just about calling or texting - with expanding functionality, phones have become multimedia recording devices and pocket-sized internet connected computers. Among teen cell phone owners:
Teens who have multi-purpose phones are avid users of those extra features. The most popular are taking and sharing pictures and playing music:

83% use their phones to take pictures.

64% share pictures with others.

60% play music on their phones.

46% play games on their phones.

32% exchange videos on their phones.

31% exchange instant messages on their phones.

27% go online for general purposes on their phones.

23% access social network sites on their phones.

21% use email on their phones.

11% purchase things via their phones.

The majority of teens are on family plans where someone else foots the bill.
There are a variety of payment plans for cell phones, as well as bundling plans for how phone minutes and texts are packaged, and a variety of strategies families use to pay for cell phones. Teens' use of cell phones is strongly associated with the type of plan they have and who pays the phone bills.

69% of teen cell phone users have a phone that is part of a contract covering all of their family's cell phones.

18% of teen cell phone users are part of a prepaid or pay-as-you-go plan.

10% of teen cell phone users have their own individual contract.

When one combines type of plan with voice minutes, the most common combination is a family plan with limited voice minutes - one in three teen cell phone users (34%) are on this type of plan. One in four teen cell phone users (25%) are on a family plan with unlimited minutes.

Over half of all teen cell phone users are on family plans that someone else (almost always a parent) pays for entirely-this figure jumps to two-thirds among teens living in households with incomes of $50,000 or more. At the same time, low income teens are much less likely to be on family plans. Among teens living in households with incomes below $30,000, only 31% are on a family plan that someone else pays for. In this group, 15% have prepaid plans that someone else pays for, and 12% have prepaid plans that they pay for entirely themselves. Black teens living in low income households are the most likely to have prepaid plans that they pay for themselves.
Unlimited plans are tied to increases in use of the phone, while teens on "metered" plans are much more circumspect in their use of the phone.
Fully three-quarters of teen cell phone users (75%) have unlimited texting. Just 13 percent of teen cell phone users pay per message. Those with unlimited voice and texting plans are more likely to call others daily or more often for almost every reason we queried - to call and check in with someone, to coordinate meeting, to talk about school work or have long personal conversations. Teens with unlimited texting typically send and receive 70 texts per day, compared with 10 texts a day for teens on limited plans and 5 texts a day for teens who pay per message.
4% of teens say they have sent a sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude image of themselves to someone via text message
A relatively small number of teens have sent and received sexually suggestive images by text:

15% of teens say they have received a sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude image of someone they know by text.

Older teens are more likely to receive "sexts," than younger teens

The teens who pay their own phone bills are more likely to send "sexts": 17% of teens who pay for all of the costs associated with their cell phones send sexually suggestive images via text; just 3% of teens who do not pay for, or only pay for a portion of the cost of the cell phone send these images.

Further details about "sexting" via cell phones may be found in our recent Teens and Sexting Report.
One in three (34%) texting teens ages 16-17 say they have texted while driving. That translates into 26% of all American teens ages 16-17.

Half (52%) of cell-owning teens ages 16-17 say they have talked on a cell phone while driving. That translates into 43% of all American teens ages 16-17.

48% of all teens ages 12-17 say they have been in a car when the driver was texting.

40% say they have been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a way that put themselves or others in danger.

More details about cell phone use among teens and distracted driving maybe found in our earlier report Teens and Distracted Driving.
New data forthcoming on Latino youth and their communication choices
Forthcoming from the Pew Hispanic Center, a sister project to the Pew Internet Project, is a new report about the ways young Latinos, ages 16 to 25, communicate with each other. This report will contain results based on a national survey of Hispanics conducted in the fall of 2009. Over 1,200 young Latinos were asked about the ways they communicate with each other, whether through text messaging, face-to-face contact, email or social network sites. This new forthcoming report is a follow-up to the report "Between Two Worlds: How Young Latinos Come of Age in America," and will be available online at http://www.pewhispanic.org

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The mobile phone has become the favored communication hub for the majority of American teens. Cell-phone texting has become the preferred channel of basic communication between teens and their friends, and cell calling is a close second. Some 75% of 12-17 year-olds now own cell phones, up from 45% in 2004.

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Some comments from a teacher who uses Google Voice

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Some comments from a teacher who uses Google Voice

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Some notes about using Google Voice voice messages: Student cell phone minutes or long distance charges can be an issue, so warn them ahead of time. A letter of explanation (cleared by school administration) to be signed by parents can get them on board with avoiding potential problems. If parents are opposed to using Google Voice or don’t want to call to your specific number (if it’s long distance), calling a school voicemail could be an alternative. Also, students make mistakes. I’ll often let them re-record their messages by hanging up on their mistake message and calling right back. I just grade the last one they submit.

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Substitute in the concept of Google Voice and it's the same reasoning.

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Why Podcast in Class? Reasons for Educational Classroom Podcasting

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Podcasting in the classroom can be simple and fun! There are lots of reasons, too. Check out the video, and then go to DitchThatTextbook.com/broadcast for lots of helpful resources for podcasting in the classroom.

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Descriptions of application of Google Voice in the Classroom

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Descriptions of application of Google Voice in the Classroom

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Vocabulary: Learners can speak sentences or paragraphs that demonstrate knowledge of vocabulary words.  You could even embed these in a class website, to serve as review/reference materials.

Audio Study Guide: Instead of having a class scribe, enhance the role by giving one learner the task of calling in the content, creating an audio archive.  You can rotate learners, so they each get the chance to serve in the role.  Embed each message into a website to serve as an audio study guide over the content.

Math Solutions: To demonstrate understanding of a topic or the solution to a problem, the learners can talk it out.  When I was a math teacher, I would have loved this as form of assessment that allowed me inside the kids’ heads.

Foreign Language: Kids can call in and read a paragraph or speak sentences, allowing you to hear how proficient they are and diagnose areas where improvement is needed.  It could be used as oral responses to teacher questions or to recite pre-written material to assess their reading and pronunciation abilities.

Audio Field Trip Journal: Have kids leave messages throughout the field trip that documents their experiences.

Speech: Learners can record speeches via the phone.  Bonus: Take advantage of the voicemail transcription feature.  Assess learners’ enunciation by seeing how accurate Google Voice transcribes their messages.

Get in Character: Let the learners have fun by leaving messages in character.  Perhaps you’re studying historical figures or fictional characters.  Let the learners assume the role and record messages assuming that role.  I’d love to hear what the kids come up with when given this task!

Podcasting: Since the voicemails can be embedded in websites or downloaded, this would be a super simple way to record a podcast!

Work the Custom Greetings: Since Google Voice lets you have unique greetings for different groups of callers, you could create a greeting personalized specifically for your students.  Kids can call in to receive homework tips, announcements, upcoming test information, or other class reminders.

Reflection Tool: Get rid of those spiral notebooks that have been serving as journals since I was an elementary student over 20 years ago.  After a class discussion or project presentation, have the learners record a reflection via Google Voice.  It’s paperless!

Announcements or Audio Newsletters: Instead of creating a printed class newsletter, why not call your own Google Voice number and leave a message consisting of a class announcement or audio newsletter?  Then, simply embed it on your class website for parents and learners to access.

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CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.6 Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and communicative tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate.

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Things to consider when implementing Google Voice in a language course:

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Things to consider when implementing Google Voice in a language course:

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1. Make sure students have phones. It’s good to double-check that your students have some kind of phone access before giving them a Google Voice assignment!

2. Keep the recording limit in mind. The maximum length of a Google Voice voicemail recording is (a frankly quite generous!) three minutes. This ought to be enough recording time for most small homework assignments, but be careful not to use this method for speeches which may exceed three minutes.

3. Using Google Voice to collect herpetology homework. Photo: Twak,CC-BY-2.0
Make sure students say their names. Include that instruction in your voicemail greeting message. There’s nothing worse than getting three or four anonymous recordings and then painstakingly trying to match the sometimes poor-quality recordings with your students’ voices. Most of the idiomatic features which make our voices unique are in very high frequency bands, and phones filter those frequencies out entirely. That’s why it’s so easy to mistake your aunt for your mother on the phone.

4. Use Google Voice inside or outside of class. Your Google Voice voicemail box is a wonderful tool for enabling students to make recordings outside of class for homework. However, during class, it can be used to record multiple simultaneous speeches or role plays. For example, I sometimes give my students an impromptu speaking topic, give them half a minute to collect their thoughts, and then direct them to call the Google Voice number all at the same time to record their responses.

5. Allow for students’ ability to prepare their speeches. Keep in mind that you cannot control how long students take to prepare their speeches outside of class, so for assignments intended to test a student’s on-the-fly language performance, this method should be used sparingly—perhaps only at the beginning of a semester.

6. Assess content, not pronunciation. Collecting pronunciation homework over the phone is not ideal because phones filter out or compress so many frequencies. Because of this, Google Voice pronunciation exercises could be good for practice, but don’t rely on it for assessment.

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I recently spent the afternoon with some enthusiastic teachers at the Mercer Island School District who are prepping for the start to the school year. One of the sessions I presented was an introduction to Google Apps for Edu with a focus on classroom application.

One of the tools I referenced was Google Voice - a free yet powerful web interface for an phone number that can forward to your personal phone numbers, record voicemail, and make smart routing decisions based on rules that you manage.

I love the ability to give families & students a way to contact me without revealing my personal contact information. The other killer feature for me is that any voicemail can be downloaded or embedded as an mp3 with a couple of clicks:

As I tend to do when in a room full of talented educators, I introduced the tool then opened the floor for a conversation of potential applications. As usual, their ideas were much more interesting than mine:

1. Students on a field trip phone in their responses to leading questions rather than sit on the floor in a museum scribbling a reflection on a worksheet.

2. Use their cell phone to interview someone and then collect the file from Google Voice to embed on a website.

3. Students call in to record their pronunciation of a vocabulary list. The teacher can check the work at their convenience rather than try to listen and offer feedback to each student within a single class period.

4. Students call in to offer status updates on group projects.

5. Students call in, each reading aloud a single chapter from a book or an original poem. The results are then downloaded and dragged into Audacity or Garageband, where they can be stitched together to create an collaborative audiobook.

As with so many Google tools, Voice lowers the barrier of entry and encourages students to create. These readily available tools, combined with the creativity of student and teacher minds, can evolve into something memorable.

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5 ways to use Google Voice in your classroom

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I recently spent the afternoon with some enthusiastic teachers at the Mercer Island School District who are prepping for the start to the school year. One of the sessions I presented was an introduction to Google Apps for Edu with a focus on classroom application.