Different Generations and the Internet February 23, 2009

For this week’s assignment, the three generations of people I chose to interview were my friend Castro, my mom, and my grandma.

When I interviewed my friend, who is a student here at Oregon State University, I found that he uses the internet for a wide variety of things. He uses it for social networking on sites such as Facebook or MySpace, to complete research for homework assignments or papers, and to watch videos on Youtube. Also, because he is going to school away from home, he uses the internet to keep in touch with his family back in Hawaii through email. He said he feels very comfortable communicating on the internet, as it is pretty much a part of his daily life. He feels that technology has definitely changed the way that he lives his life, but for the better. Because he has access to technology from home, he doesn’t go to the library to work on school papers or projects, he simply accesses the library webpage from home. He thinks that the internet does have pros and cons, but the pros definitely outweigh the cons.

According to my mom, she uses the internet for both work purposes and for personal use. My mom works as a paralegal for the City and County of Honolulu, and uses the internet all the time at work to email people involved with the cases that she works on. She also uses the internet to do research and find information pertinent to her cases. She also uses the internet at home to communicate with friends and family via email or to keep up to date with the news. My mom said she feels comfortable communicating via the internet, but it took her a while to get the hang of things. She feels that technology has improved the way she lives her life, especially from a work standpoint. Because she works with people from many different states on cases, she needs to be able to keep in touch with them and send information back and forth. Before email, she used to have to use a fax machine to send documents, which was a big hassle for her. She also feels that the internet has made information a lot more accessible, which she feels can be both good and bad at the same time.

My grandma uses the internet only when she is at work. She works part-time at the Planning and Permitting department, and uses the internet sometimes to check for permitting requests or gather information. She doesn’t really like computers in general, and feels that using the internet is kind of a hassle. While she understands the convenience of being able to electronically file permits and keep records instead of having to keep paper copies lying around, she personally has an easier time processing paper forms. Aside from at work, my grandma really won’t use much technology. She doesn’t have a computer at home, she has a cell phone but it’s usually off, and you have to call her house phone. While she doesn’t have a problem with the internet or technology, she was able to liver her life just fine before it was invented, so doesn’t feel the need to use it now.

Comparing the three generations of people that I interviewed only served to confirm what I have always thought, which is that people’s use of the internet varies based on their age. Younger generations seem to use the internet for anything and everything. However, older generations seem to use the internet less often and only for specific purposes, if at all. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that younger generations pretty much grew up learning how to use internet in school, while to older generations it was a relatively new invention that they had to learn about for themselves or from their children. However, I think that in the future, as my generation gets older, there will be less of a difference in internet use across generations as everyone will have the same amount of knowledge about the internet.

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