About My Project

I am glad that I am done with my presentation but not happy on my performance on the presentation. I have public anxiety, when I stranded in front of the class, I was so nervous that I forgot everything. So I basically just read through all the slides even with a two pages note on hand. I supposed to share three stories in my presentation, just forgotten all at the time.
Okay, back to the topic. My research topic is New Media and Generational Differences. As we all know, new media is basically internet related social networking and entertainment, where social networking plays a significant role in the internet technology era. People who share common interest actively interact with each other in the online world regardless of the physical positions in the actual world through the web 2.0 technology. Some most popular sites in the US like you tube, face book, twitter, craigslist…were products of web 2.0 technology. Internet and new media are interrelated, and are so popular. With 72.4% of US population use internet and consume new media in a regular base. With these 72.4% of internet users, it occupies people from different generations. So, what do different generations consume new media differently? According to a series of telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International:
- Baby Boomers (born 1946-64):make travel reservation online.
- Generation M (born 1964-79):Banking, Shopping, and look for health information
- Net Generation (born 1980-89) & iGeneration (born 1990 and beyond): most active in all sorts of online activities
◦ Watch You Tube Videos
◦ Download Apps
◦ Social Networking
◦ Gaming
Generational differences also raise value differences .In the social networking dominant age, with all the difference and popular social networking sites. Internet users tend to head toward to share information online. Youth are most actively in this practice by means of frequently update status in varies of ways. Such as video on you tube, diary on blog, pictures on face book…etc. While, old people concerning the privacy regarding post personal information online.
Smartphone is a form of new media. With varies of integrate features (camera, MP3, internet…etc); teens use phones in a new way. Communication is no longer the traditional way of face to face or phone to phone taking. Instead, phones are use as a portable device for texting, face book, youtube…etc.
Communication barriers also exist between generations. As Larry Rosen stated, “I tried to reach my teenage daughter the other day. I left a voice mail, sent an e-mail message and finally texted her and told her to check both and call me back.” In response, his daughter said, “I dont tlk on th fone. txt im fb me.” With all these new “invented” abbreviations, many people don’t really understand the phases of youth.
In conclusion, 21 century is an era of rapidly changes; everyone shall keep updating themselves not only informationally but also technologically. Young people are so fast on adapting new stuff, while old people are not. In the future, the gap between youth and old will be larger and larger. We need to take into consider that if the generational barriers exist between us and the older generations, it will also exist when we are old.