Over the last few years, the image of students talking, texting or e-mailing on their phones in between classes has become increasingly common on most college campuses.
And this trend doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.
A new study performed at Ball State University found that 99.8 percent of college students now have some kind of cell phone, and that smart phones are accounting for more of their electronic communication and computing needs than ever before.
The study was conducted by Michael Hanley, director of Ball State’s Institute for Mobile Media Research. Hanley began the study in 2005, and examined the phone usage of 5,500 students over the course of 11 surveys.
Text messaging is one of the main reasons students have been switching their computing and communication needs over to their phones. According to Hanley’s research, 97 percent of the students he surveyed used text messaging as their main form of communication.
Around 30 percent of the students from the survey also used e-mail of some kind, and 25 percent use instant messaging. And with smart phones allowing people to access these services from their phones, computer usage has been dropping even more.
“In the few years since instant messaging leaped from the computer to the cell phone, a new mobile lifestyle has evolved for college students,” Hanley said. “And except for studying, the computer is quickly being left behind.”
Jennifer Knust, a senior accounting major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said she uses her phone for nearly every method of communicating with people, even websites like Facebook.
“You can pretty much do everything from your phone now,” Knust said. “And it’s right there with you all the time so there’s really no reason to use a computer for stuff like that.”
Students have also been using phones to meet their Internet needs as well, with nine out of 10 students who have smart phones regularly accessing the Internet from their mobile devices according to the Ball State study. And with web-based games and social media being available through phones, Hanley said computers are losing many of the services students used to need them for.
But cell phones aren’t totally replacing computers for everyone. Brandt DeVries, a junior restaurant and tourism management major at UNL, said he uses his smart phone for e-mailing and quick trips online, but he doesn’t see it fully replacing his computer.
“It’s handy and all but it’s also really small,” he said. “You can’t multitask on a Blackberry and it’s not like you could write a paper on one of these or anything.”
Although the smart phone is king of college student technology right now, Hanley said that might not always be the case. Just like smart phones have replaced computers, new devices like the iPad could take over for phones.
“College students are the first to adopt new types of communication technologies,” Hanley said. “I think the iPad and similar devices may change the way they communicate yet again as the technology evolves.”