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August 23, 2010
E-mail is too slow, says the class of 2014
This week college freshmen start to arrive on campuses, ready to experience orientation, new romance, what happens when you drink too much cheap beer and . . . oh, yes, occasionally going to class.
What are these new students like? To find out, it’s time to check out the Beloit College “Mindset” list , the annual collection of facts about the incoming class that gives us insight into what 18-year-olds are thinking (and makes the rest of us feel old).
No surprise that my focus is on how freshmen experience communication. Why should you care? Because it’s valuable to step outside your own perspective and take a look how people in a different demographic see the world. Only then can you design communication that meets your audience’s needs.
Here are Beloit’s big communication insights:
- Incoming college freshmen will be using their smart phones for absolutely everything, and think that e-mail is way too slow.
- Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
- Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.
- Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.
- College freshmen never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.
- The first home computer they probably touched was an Apple II or Mac II; they are now in a museum.
- Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.
- Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.
Got any others? Feel free to share.
Posted by Alison Davis at August 23, 2010 01:08 PM
(Find me around the web)
