Thursday, December 10, 2009

Mobile phones and teenagers

I saw a link to an American study on teenagers' use of phones. The headline was Teens Use Phones to Cheat which is a shame since the study seems to say a lot more than this simplistic summary would suggest. It looks like the poll is based on the responses of American teenagers but I wonder if UK teens would be any different?

A longer report on the poll is given at the Common Sense Media site. On the cheating issue, it notes that 35% of students interviewed admitted to using mobile phones to cheat and over half cheat using the Internet. I must admit that I haven't read the more extended report which the site also provides but I wonder what the statistics were for cheating pre mobile phones? Students have always tried to beat the system but has mobile phone and Internet use led to an increase in cheating?

The other aspect of the report summary that struck me comes from the Benson Strategy Group site:
"The findings also reveal a split in perception between teens and parents: Only 23% of parents whose children have cellphones think they are using them at school; 65% of students say they do."
I suspect my parents don't know the half of what I got up to at school and I'm sure that I am equally in the dark about my own children's activities at school. New technology but an old problem?

Question
I may come back to this once I've had a look at the full report but in the meantime, what do you think?

3 comments:

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
David said...

Just removed Larry's post because it smelled like spam. If you are Larry and feel hard done to, get back to me and I can restore the comment if it seems appropriate.

Unknown said...

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