VOA标准英语2012--Mixed Future Awaits Hyper-Connected Youth

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Now the buzzword is “millennials,” since many of our teenagers and young adults were born in the years just before and right after the turn of the century - which also happened to be the beginning of a new thousand-year millennium¹.

Others call our young people the “always-on” generation.

They seem to be in perpetual touch with each other - and sampling information from the world over - via cell phones, tablets and other mobile devices.

Now Elon University in North Carolina and the Pew Internet and American Life Project have produced a study of millennials and what the future may hold for them. It’s based on a survey of more than 1,000 tech experts, scholars, and educators.

The survey finds that today’s young Americans are, in its words, “hyper-connected.” That’s both good and bad for their future.

On the good side: Millennials are nimble, quick-acting “multi-taskers” who approach problems in fresh ways and have an almost magical ability to quickly process a great deal of information. They are astute² at telling the difference between so-called “noise” and truly important messages in what the report calls “the ever-growing sea of information.” 

These abilities could lead to important breakthroughs that will benefit the country. 

But the experts interviewed by Elon and the Pew Project found a troublesome flip³ side as well: They predict that the “always-on” generation will, in the report’s words, “exhibit a thirst for instant gratification and quick fixes, a loss of patience, and a lack of deep thinking ability,” due to what one expert called “fast-twitch wiring.”

That particular conclusion won’t surprise parents and other older adults who watch today’s young people zip through information with the speed - and sometimes the analytical⁴ skills - of a buzzing gnat⁵. 

Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Project, notes what he called “palpable concern” that the marvelous communications skills exhibited by many “tech-literate” young people are not shared by all of their peers. He says this could create “new social and economic divisions” between Americans who can comfortably navigate⁶ through the maze⁷ of technological⁸ gadgets⁹, and those who cannot.

In other words, a different kind of “lower class” that literally¹⁰ isn’t up to speed.

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