Self-reporting and technology use

One of the interesting things about Blog entry #1 is how many of you felt that your results were at odds with how you thought you used technology, or that you fit into multiple groups. One related issue to this is that how we self-report our own technology use (and any behavior, really), is often flawed. It’s just hard to accurately keep track of how much time we spend doing a given activity, unless we have some kind of external monitoring system.

Case in point: this article*  talks about a recent study that found that undergraduates significantly OVER-report how much time they spend with Facebook.

Food for thought as we go through the semester: It can be tempting to say that “nobody talks face-to-face anymore” (which all the research says isn’t true). Maybe one reason people think that is because we notice our technology use more? An interesting experiment this semester would be to try to pay attention to how much you do actually communicate face-to-face with people. I’ll bet you find the results interesting!

 

*http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/report-you-do-not-use-facebook-nearly-as-much-as-you-think-you-do/267321/