Young people not so good at searching, should get off my lawn

One of the common urban legends in the education world is that that children are born with the innate ability to operate electronics but, sometime in their early to mid-twenties, these [former] children go through some sort of technological menopause and become technologically-challenged like you and me.  Researchers at the British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee decided to investigate the validity of the first part of that theory by measuring how well [British] children born after 2003 perform certain internet tasks. 

The results are disappointing. While information literacy is now embedded into the curriculum, "[a] careful look at the literature over the past 25 years finds no improvement (or deterioration) in young people’s information skills." Children may be swift at searching, but "the speed of young people’s web searching means that little time is spent in evaluating information, either for relevance, accuracy or authority." This may be because "young people have a poor understanding of their information needs and thus find it difficult to develop effective search strategies."

In other words, kids kind of suck at Google.

You can download the complete report in Adobe Acrobat format.

Comments

[Latest internet tips and tricks]

No dude..
I dont agree with you...

[Nick]

I think this is true. How long will it be before pre-schoolers are taught relevance behind surfing?