“Another bub­bling intra-generational gap, as any mod­ern par­ent knows, is that younger chil­dren tend to be ever more art­ful mul­ti­taskers. Stud­ies per­formed by Dr. Rosen at Cal State show that 16– to 18-year-olds per­form seven tasks, on aver­age, in their free time — like tex­ting on the phone, send­ing instant mes­sages and check­ing Face­book while sit­ting in front of the television.

Peo­ple in their early 20s can han­dle only six, Dr. Rosen found, and those in their 30s per­form about five and a half.

That ver­sa­til­ity is great when they’re killing time, but will a younger gen­er­a­tion be as focused at school and work as their forebears? ”

“Stats pub­lished by Nielsen show that social media usage has increased by 82% in the last year, an astro­nom­i­cal rise. Face­book (Face­book), Twit­ter (Twit­ter), YouTube, blogs, and social inter­ac­tion are becom­ing the focus of our online inter­ac­tions, even more than search.

We’re social crea­tures, so it was only a mat­ter of time until we fig­ured out how to make the web an effi­cient medium for com­mu­ni­ca­tion, shar­ing, and forg­ing friend­ships. Now that we’re finally imple­ment­ing the social layer though, it’s tough to find a sce­nario where the rise of social media doesn’t continue.

In ten years, when you access the web, most of the time you spend will be to con­nect with your friends. Almost all of that will be on social net­works and through social media. It will be the #1 rea­son why we ever pull out our phones, tablets, or computers.”

“To add to that idea, some­thing like #ALAQnA would be great. The #edchat model is a ter­rific one to fol­low: a few nights at a week, at a set time, all of the #edchat twit­ter­ers respond-to/converse-about top­ics like “How can edu­ca­tors effec­tively assess stu­dents in the 21st cen­tury?”. The con­ver­sa­tions are amaz­ing if you fol­low the chats live, and they stay on twit­ter for the con­ver­sa­tion to con­tinue in the days (and some­times weeks) to follow.”