Well Rounded Look at IM

When cruising the net, I found a very good PDF written by Juan Marquez focusing on students at Stanford University, but it can also be applied to virtually any college. It can be found here:

http://www.stanford.edu/class/pwr3-25/group2/pdfs/IM_Social.pdf

The article really analyzes the often common misconceptions that people have of IM. I liked how he addressed that students use IM in many different ways and for many different lengths of time. Here is a good graph from the article that shows how much time 70 students he interviewed spent on IM, and the results were anywhere from 1 hour to 27 hours a week.



Many students start using IM around middle school age, which is an emotionally tumultuous time. IM actually increases depression rates at that time, but according to the article, most students grow out of getting depressed because of IM in a few years.

I agree with Marquez when he says the most appealing aspect of IM is multi-tasking. He discusses the busy schedule of most college students, and one thing most do not have much time for is spending it on the phone, so quick IM chats while they are eating or doing homework can help. Something he doesn't mention though is the possible use of IM in the classroom. As laptops are becoming more and more popular for students to have in class, some students are IMing during lectures, definitely not a good thing for academic success.

We as college students need to learn how to balance our time with IMing and deciding when it is and when it is not appropriate. It is a relatively new technology and will take time to teach when it should be used. IMing has a very good chance of making our lives easier if we can control ourselves.