Cisco Finds College Students Prefer Internet To Cars And Dating

The just released, and extremely long, 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report  illustrates how deeply ingrained the internet is with a young person’s daily life. This study surveys 2,800 professionals and college students 30 years old or younger from 14 different countries. Nearly half of respondents (62 percent of employees surveyed and 55 percent of college students polled) cite the internet as “an integral part of their lives” and say they could not live without it. In fact, one in three considers the internet a fundamental resource, as important as food, air, water, or shelter. If forced to choose one or the other, 64 percent of college students opt for using the internet versus traveling by car.

Illustrating the trend away from reading printed material, Cisco also finds one out of every five students has not purchased a physical book (excluding textbooks required for class) in over two years, and in some cases, never at all. Only four percent of professionals and students, globally, considers the daily newspaper their most important tool for accessing information.

A full 91 percent of college students and 88 percent of working professionals polled say they have a Facebook account, with the majority of them checking it at least once per day. One in four college students even consider staying current on Facebook more important than partying, dating, listening to music, or hanging out with friends. Two-thirds of the students and about one-half of the professionals cite a mobile device (whether that device is a tablet, a smartphone or a laptop) as the “most important technology in their lives.”  Two of five college students surveyed globally say the internet itself is more important to them than dating, going out with friends, or listening to music.

On the other hand, television continues to decline in importance with only a meager eight percent of employees and six percent of college students considering it the most important technology device in their daily lives. As more programming becomes available on smartphones and computers via digital streaming, television’s importance is expected to dwindle even further.

Cisco’s report also indicates a blurring of the boundaries between work life and personal life, with 68 percent of employees who use Twitter claiming they follow the Twitter activity of their manager or colleagues, and 42 percent following both. Seven out of ten friended managers and/or colleagues on Facebook, although in the United States these figures were lower with 40 percent friending co-workers and only 23 percent friending both managers and co-workers.

Cisco vice-president of Enterprise Marketing Marie Hatter says, “The results of the Cisco Connected World Technology Report should make businesses re-examine how they need to evolve in order to attract talent and shape their business models.” Personally, I feel that’s very true. Companies hoping to attract new talent will shoot themselves in the feet if they insist on locking down internet access in the workplace, when today’s youth rank that right up there with banning drinking water or food on company property.