Esteban Cortez / The Collegian
For the 21,655 freshman at Fresno State, everything about college is new. The teachers, the campus and the all-around lifestyle are aspects that will take time to get used to.
However, the one thing that has never been new to the largest freshman class in Fresno State history is the Internet.
Most college freshman in the class of 2015 were born in 1993. They grew up with the World Wide Web. In fact, they are slightly younger than it. Rather than portable CD players, today’s college freshman grew up with iPods, smartphones and the Internet.
A new generation of technological users has emerged and with them comes positive and negative aspects.
Each year, officials at Beloit College in Wisconsin put together a Mindset List that is meant to be a reflection of the way that college freshman view the world. Its purpose is to allow others to see life through the minds of those born in 1993.
According to this list, it is common for college freshmen today to think that “Arnold Palmer has always been a drink, music has always been available via free downloads and ‘PC’ has come to mean personal computer, not political correctness.”
Even though The Mindset List shows 75 conceptions that the class of 2015 hold, the most important fact for this class has proven to be the Internet.
According to The Mindset List’s website at www.beloit.edu/mindset, “Members of this year’s freshman class, most of them born in 1993, are the first generation to grow up taking the word ‘online’ for granted and for whom crossing the digital divide has redefined research, original sources and access to information, changing the central experiences and methods in their lives.”
Most college freshmen have grown up with such fast paced technology that it just seems natural, but despite the advancements, it may not be a good thing.
Christine Edmondson, a psychology professor at Fresno State said, “The benefits of this technology outweigh the downsides.”
Although benefits such as face-to-face communication and an almost instantaneous speed of transferring information is done on a day-to-day basis, Edmondson doubts that all aspects of this technology have had a positive impact on those who grew up with it.
“Technology affects how we socialize with each other,” Edmondson said. “I worry about the things that are lost when technology intervenes with two people.”
Communication advancements such as social networking have taken off as far as popularity and those born in 1993 have grown accustomed to it.
A survey done by The Pew Research Center, in the United States, 77 percent of people ages 18 to 29 use social networking. That is a large amount of users considering popular social networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook were not created until about 2003.
Such a large amount of users has its ups and downs for this generation and for those to come.
“I think that this generation and future generations are going to lose all personal social skills,” Fresno State biology major Kylee Warkentin said. “At this point, social interaction is so heavily focused on social networking sites and technology instead of being face to face, solely for convenience.”
This generation, is used to young children carrying cell phones and using iPods, could benefit in some ways from technology and the Internet.
Juan Lopez, a Fresno State business finance major said that, “Access to technology will always be a good thing and as kids get older they will learn to become productive with new devices.”
Even though Lopez thinks that technology has helped this generation and will continue to help the generations to come, he thinks that laziness could be a result from the advancements in technology.
“It bothers me that children aren’t going outside and exercising as much. With health care such a huge issue, I can see lack of exercise as a big problem in years to come.”
Whether this generation shows positive or negative results from technology, the fact remains that they have been impacted by it.