Class of 2012 Through Time
This summary highlights the ways that the technology use of students in the class of 2012 has changed during their time at Williams.
As we conduct the survey each time the set of questions we ask evolves, depending on what we need to know for upcoming projects (e.g. when we ran the first survey we had a major phone project impending and needed to know how many students had/used their land-lines), depending on answers from previous surveys (e.g. since mobile phones reached 100% penetration in 2009 we’ve changed that area of questioning to be more about what kind of phone people have and how they use it), and depending on new technology (e.g. in 2012 we started asking about tablets). As a result, the items covered on this page don’t necessarily match exactly with the questions on any given survey, and sometimes data for a given survey are derived rather than being explicitly asked. With all that in mind, here’s what we know about evolving technology use of the class of 2012:
Phones
| as FY | as So | as Jr | as Sr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Has a land line phone | 12% | 4% | – | 0% |
| Has a cell phone | 100% | 100% | – | 100% |
| Has a smart phone | 29% | 27% | – | 67% |
How the cell phone is used
The question allows a respondant to choose multiple answers, so the percentages often won’t add to 100% (and if they do, it’s just a coincidence). The percentages are the porportion of the respondants of that class that answered that question.
The answers here are also greatly influenced by the capabilities of the phone that the respondant has. Since we ask about using it for phone calls every person that has a phone at all can answer yes to that. The items that require more advanced phone features (e.g. email) will be capped at roughly the percent of people that have smart phones (see the previous item). It’s also worth noting that the definition of a ‘basic phone’ changes over time – what was a smart phone feature in 2009 might in 2012 be considered a part of a basic/simple phone.
Since we’re interested in function more than how it’s implemented, the Text Messaging item combines SMS and any other text-based chat tool (e.g. AIM, gChat, etc.). It’s interesting to compare the Text messaging result here with the the IM/chat result of the internet use question below.
| as FY | as So | as Jr | as Sr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text messaging | 100% | 96% | – | 100% |
| 22% | 20% | – | 62% | |
| Taking pictures | 71% | 64% | – | 81% |
| Sharing/sending pictures | 45% | 51% | – | 19% |
| Looking at pictures | 39% | 36% | – | 46% |
| Watching video | 16% | 11% | – | 31% |
| Recording video | 16% | 15% | – | 46% |
| Listening to music | 20% | 20% | – | 46% |
| Web browsing | 20% | 24% | – | 69% |
| Calendar/scheduling | 49% | 40% | – | 50% |
| GPS | 10% | 9% | – | 58% |
| Blogging | 2% | 2% | – | 4% |
| Games | 33% | 22% | – | 35% |
Internet
The question allows a respondant to choose multiple answers, so the percentages often won’t add to 100% (and if they do, it’s just a coincidence). The percentages are the porportion of the respondants of that class that answered that question. The kinds of activities we asked about also changed a bit from year to year – e.g. we asked about managing projects on the 2009 and 2010 survey but not the 2012 survey – so there are some gaps in the data. Items for which we only have one data point (or otherwise can’t make a connection between survey instances) have been skipped.
| as FY | as So | as Jr | as Sr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Social networking | 71% | 64% | – | 96% |
| Professional networking | – | 6% | – | 52% |
| IM/chat | 76% | 61% | – | 19% |
| Microblogging | 16% | 21% | – | 24% |
| Blogging | 12% | 13% | – | 28% |
| Reference/research | 73% | 88% | – | 92% |
| News | 78% | 80% | – | 96% |
| Watch videos | 84% | 88% | – | 88% |
| Publish videos | 8% | 5% | – | 27% |
| Publish images | 20% | 23% | – | 54% |
| Games | 39% | 26% | – | 24% |
| Forums/Lists | 27% | 61% | – | 72% |
| Share knowledge | 8% | 4% | – | 44% |
| Manage projects | 6% | 4% | – | – |
| Document sharing/transfer | 10% | 16% | – | 64% |
Kinds of Computers
Totals may be > 100% since students may have more than one computing device.
| FY | So | Jr | Sr | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NO COMPUTER | 0% | 0% | – | 0% | |
| Windows desktop | 6% | 2% | – | 11% | |
| Windows laptop | 45% | 43% | – | 41% | |
| Mac desktop | 0% | 0% | – | 0% | |
| Mac laptop | 51% | 54% | – | 59% | |
| Linux desktop | 0% | 0% | – | 4% | |
| Linux laptop | 0% | 2% | – | 0% | |
| – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Total desktop | 6% | 2% | – | 15% | |
| Total laptop | 96% | 98% | – | 100% | |
| – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Total Windows | 51% | 45% | – | 52% | |
| Total Mac | 51% | 54% | – | 59% | |
| Total Linux | 0% | 2% | – | 4% |
Email Check Frequency
| as FY | as So | as Jr | as Sr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Many time a day | 79% | 80% | – | 89% |
| About once a day | 21% | 20% | – | 11% |
Social Networking Sites
We only started asking about specific social networking sites starting in 2010 (and Google+ did not exist at that time).
An interesting point revealed by this question is that many students (if not most) use more than one social networking site.
| as FY | as So | as Jr | as Sr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| – | 43% | – | 100% | |
| Google+ | – | – | – | 37% |
| Myspace | – | 22% | – | 0% |
| Friendster | – | 9% | – | 0% |
| Live Journal | – | 31% | – | 0% |
| other | – | 6% | – | 4% |
Megamenu Social