In part 1, we established the need to redeem the tool of technology to reach this wired generation in ministry. In part 2, we will consider some surprising statistics to help us see the impact of technology on this generation:
- Ipods—The Ipod has dethroned alcohol as the most “in” thing among college undergraduates according to a recent survey. 73% of students surveyed said the Ipod was “in”; up from 59% last year. What was #2? There was actually a tie–drinking beer and Facebook.com shared runner up honors at 71%.
- Facebook—an interview with Facebook’s Chris Hughes provides these stats: “Facebook supports 882 colleges today - there are about 2,000 in the U.S. if you count community colleges….about 85% of students in supported colleges have a profile up on FaceBook. That’s 3.85 million members. Chris tells me that 60% log in daily. About 85% log in at least once a week, and 93% log in at least once a month.”
- Myspace—According to internet tracking firm Hitwise, “social networking Web site MySpace.com has become the No. 1 online destination in America, accounting for 4.46 percent of all U.S. Internet visits for the week ending July 8.” Foxnews adds, “MySpace captured nearly 80 percent of visits to online social networking sites, up from 76 percent in April. A distant second was FaceBook at 7.6 percent.”
- Blogs— 45.4 million blog sites currently exist (compared to 27 million in January 2006), The blogosphere is doubling in size every 6 months, It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago, On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day, About 55% of bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created, There are about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour, The top blog language is not English but Japanese.
- Christian media—what percentage of evangelicals use Christian media? 78 percent listen to Christian music, 64 percent watch Christian television, 64 percent visit Christian websites. 64 percent listen to Christian radio. 60 percent read Christian non-fiction books. 55 percent watch Christian movies. 47 percent read Christian fiction books.44 percent read Christian magazines.
- Instant Messaging— The 313 million worldwide users of instant messages stay online an average of about 6.3 hours a day, according to research firm ComScore Networks Inc. 58 percent of IM users customize the messages they leave when they are away from IM, according to AOL,
- Video games— According to a new AP-AOL Games poll, 40 percent of American adults play games on a computer or a console. Men, younger adults and minorities were most likely to play those games….Among those who describe themselves as gamers, 45 percent play over the Internet. And more than a third of online gamers spent more than $200 last year on gaming, compared with nearly a quarter of those who don’t play games online.
- Cell phones—A survey of 575 South Korean high school students found that the top third of users — students who used their phones more than 90 times a day — frequently did so because they were unhappy or bored….Two of every five youths in the U.S. from ages 8 to 18 have a cellphone, according to a recent survey. Students in grades seven through 12 spend an average of an hour a day on their cellphones — about the same time they devote to homework
- Text Messaging— Among teens who go online daily and own a cellphone, 53% most often communicate with friends via written messages, according to a 2005 report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, and 61% of the time they’re chatting via IM. %. In 2005, more than 500 billion text messages were sent and received worldwide, as reported by Verizon Wireless. By 2010, it is projected to be more than 2.3 trillion.
- Online gambling—Online gambling represents a $6 billion dollar a year business, with poker leading the way in the growing industry. An estimated 1.6 million (almost 10%) of US college students say they gambled online in the past year, almost all played poker. A University of Connecticut study found that nearly 25% of those who gambled online fit the clinical definition of a pathological gambler, suggesting that hundreds of thousands of college students may have an online gambling problem. (New York Times Magazine June 11, 2006 pp. 52-5
- Online Sexual Temptation—Currently there are 4.2 million sites, and over 372 million pages of pornography on the internet. Every day 68 million internet searches find them. The average age of first exposure to pornography is now 11. 80% of 15-17 year olds have had multiple exposures to hard core porn and 90% of 8-16 year olds have viewed it online. 12-17 year olds are now the largest consumers of online pornography. (Leadership Network Advance May 2006 citing CP80 Foundation Internet Channel Initiative) A survey of Canadian college students found that 87 percent of more than 2,500 respondents ‘fessed up to using technology like instant message, webcams, and text message for sexual purposes.
- Universities using technology to reach students
- Next to campus visits, one study shows schools’ Internet sites are the most important tool high-school seniors use when choosing a college
- An increasing number of colleges and universities are hiring and hosting student blogs. They have recognized that these online stream of consciousness journals attract a lot of attention and are an inroad for potential students. Administrators will often recruit bloggers and some schools pay students small stipends (i.e. $25 a week) to write their blogs. (Chicago Tribune January 15, 2006 sec. 17 p. 1)
- Online courses are becoming increasingly mainstream with over 2.4 million people taking some college offering over the internet in 2004.
