At Amherst College, more digital devices were registered by Freshmen (443) than there are actual Freshmen (438).
This is according to the “IT Index” by the school’s Director of Information Technology, Peter Schilling. Also of note: 1% have landlines while 99% have Facebook accounts. Clive Thomson recently posted on the report, concluding that “landlines are now officially a dead-man-walking technology.” Desktops aren’t far behind. Here are the stats:
- Percentage of first-year applicants who applied online in 2003: 33%.
- Percentage of applicants who did last year: 89%.
- Students first created a Facebook group in 2006.
- By the end of August 2008 the total number of members and posts at the Amherst College Class of 2012 Facebook group: 432 members and 3,225 posts. (This class has 438 students in it… oh, those sad, lonely 6 people…)
- Students in the class of 2012 who registered computers, iPhones, game consoles, etc. on the campus network by the end of the day on August 24th, the day they moved into their dorm rooms: 370 students registered 443 devices.
- Number of students in the class of 2012 who brought desktop computers to campus: 14.
- Number that brought iPhones/iTouches: 93.
- Likelihood that a student with an iPhone/iTouch is in the class of 2012: approximately 1 in 2.
- Total number of students on campus this year that have landline phone service: 5 (the same ones without Facebook?).
- Mac or PC? Of the four classes currently on campus the classes of 2009 and 2010 are more likely to own Windows, while the classes of 2011 and 2012 are more likely to own Macs.
The shear speed at which these technologies (online applications, Facebook, all things Apple) are being adopted is just astounding. This is Ray Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns in action. Of course this is just one school (and a small one at that) but the results are indicative of much larger societal shifts, with young people at the vanguard.
College students are not only adopting new technologies, they are creating them. (And not just Facebook.) A few UMASS Amherst grads created CampusLIVE, a customizable student homepage with weather, search, facebook, news, links and of course TV listings and delivery menus. They are in the process of expanding it to other area schools and promoting it to students–on Amherst’s Facebook wall, of course.
