Frequency of text and instant messaging use among college-aged individuals

¶ … College Aged Individuals (frequency of Use)

Instant messaging has become one of the fundamentals means of communication in the 21st century. Together with other forms of Internet communication (email, blogging etc.), instant messaging has helped created a virtual community in which individual interact with much more easiness and with increased speed. There's no category of age where this is as evident as in the college community, among college students. Whether for leisure or academic purpose, meeting with friends or discussing with the teacher the details of the course project or assignment, the instant messaging service is widely spread among college students.

According to researchers, instant messaging offers two different functions specific of the computer-mediated communication: (1) "the ability to know who is connected to the shared space between or among friends" and (2) "the ability to conduct a text-based conversation in real time." Obviously, from a leisure use perspective, these are two fundamentals reasons for increased use of IM among college students.

The college user of Internet is the heavies category of Internet user in the United States. Indeed, while only 59% of the U.S. citizens use the Internet at a national level, 86% of college students use the Internet. From these, three quarters are avid instant messaging users, compared to only half of the all Internet users.

Further more, college students are deemed to be twice more likely to be using instant messaging services in any given day than the rest of the Internet user. On any given day, 26% of college students use instant messaging services, with only

12% of other Internet users using IM on an average day. Additionally, 85% of college students are choosing the Internet as the best way to interact and communicate with their friends.

Besides the two most important reasons previously mentioned, we also need to point out to the advantages of multitasking that instant messaging services offer. We need to remember that competition in the communication segment is extremely solid in the 21st century, with the likes of mobile phones or email as important competitors to IM. However, none of these combine the efficiency of instant messaging with its capacity to allow the user to perform other tasks at the same time, as well as with the facility of providing short, but, at the same time, comprising answers, to questions that may come up in an activity.

On the other hand, instant messaging is often used in the interaction with the academic community. Again, the main reason for this seems to be the very low lag time that IM allows for, as compared to the email, for example. According to Pew Internet & American Life Project, while 42% of Internet college users use the Internet to communicate socially (identifiable as IM social use), 38% do use it to engage in work for classes.

There are two cases we can exemplify with here. First of all, many of the teachers rely nowadays on the use of instant messaging services to provide a quick feedback to students referring to certain issues related to the course. The usual procedure in the academic environment is that the teacher sets up a certain period of the day when he is in his office and students can pass by for questions. However, with instant messaging services, this can (1) be extended to a longer period of time, corresponding to the time that the teacher spends in front of his computer involved in different activities and (2) be more efficient, because of low lag time and the possibility of multiple IM conversions, allowing the teacher to answer more questions at the same time.