Overview

Teens and young adults brought up from childhood with a continuous connection to each other and to information will be nimble, quick-acting multitaskers who count on the Internet as their external brain and who approach problems in a different way from their elders, according to a new survey of technology experts.

Many of the experts surveyed by Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center and the Pew Internet Project said the effects of hyperconnectivity and the always-on lifestyles of young people will be mostly positive between now and 2020. But the experts in this survey also predicted this generation will exhibit a thirst for instant gratification and quick fixes, a loss of patience, and a lack of deep-thinking ability due to what one referred to as “fast-twitch wiring.”

Click here to view credited survey participants' contributions to the discussion of people's perceptions of the likely future of teens-to-20s youth by 2020

Click here to view anonymous survey participants' contributions to the discussion of people's perceptions of the likely future of teens-to-20s youth by 2020

About the Survey

The survey results are based on a non-random, opt-in, online sample of 1,021 internet experts and other internet users, recruited via email invitation, Twitter or Facebook from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University.  Since the data are based on a non-random sample, a margin of error cannot be computed, and the results are not projectable to any population other than the experts in this sample.

This publication is part of a Pew Research Center series that captures people’s expectations for the future of the internet, in the process presenting a snapshot of current attitudes. Find out more at: http://pewinternet.org/topics/Future-of-the-internet.aspx and http://imaginingtheinternet.org.