British Libary on the Google Generation

I spent a day at the British Library last week doing some background research on social media sort of stuff. I picked up a newsletter that amongst other things, referred to a report, Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future, written by CIBER at UCL.



The research challenges many areas of common wisdom about Gen Y:

• They are more comfortable with technology, but older users are catching up fast


• They have shifted decisively to texting vs talking (unproven)


• They multitask in all areas of their lives (unproven)


• They have zero tolerance for delay (no, older people are impatient too)


• They are expert searchers (no, this is a gangerous myth - digital and information literacies do not go hand in hand).

From my own experience, all of these behaviours still seem true, but I think this research is a useful check that they may not be as significant as we often, and some blogs would lead us to, think.