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The document summarizes a student's research project on differences in cell phone usage between older and younger generations. A survey was conducted of 76 classmates, mostly younger, who reported using their phones mainly for communication and social media. Additional in-depth surveys found younger people rely heavily on phones while older people do not feel as attached and could go without them. The research aimed to broaden older views of technology by showing cell phones can be essential tools for various purposes like education, business, and entertainment.

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45 views

Whitepaper

The document summarizes a student's research project on differences in cell phone usage between older and younger generations. A survey was conducted of 76 classmates, mostly younger, who reported using their phones mainly for communication and social media. Additional in-depth surveys found younger people rely heavily on phones while older people do not feel as attached and could go without them. The research aimed to broaden older views of technology by showing cell phones can be essential tools for various purposes like education, business, and entertainment.

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© © All Rights Reserved
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Antoneia Ward
Prof. Cassel
Eng. Comp. 1201-219
25 Oct. 2015

Introduction: Our theory is that older people between the ages of 40 and better are unaware of
all the advantages of the cell phone and its uses. We have discovered from observation
between family members and older people that we know on an individual basis that the average
older person feels that young people are addicted on their phone. They believe that it is a waste
of time and very unproductive. Given, there are some people that truly waste away their time
and lives on looking at a computer screen all day, however with proper use the cellphone can be
a very important and vital tool. One can see that today's generation (ages 0-23 24-39) are very
well versed in technology and how to best utilize it to their advantage, whether it be used as an
academic tool, for business, entertainment, work, social networking and/or etc. The options on
how one can utilize their cellphones and other devices are close to endless. I believe a lot of
older people fail to realize what an essential tool these devices (laptop, iPad, computer or tablet)
can be. It is our intention to broaden the views that the older generations have on technology
and how frequent this generation uses it.

Methods: The methods that we used to gather our information to test our theory included
working together as a team to form a question and theory. With that we formulated a survey, in
hope that it would answer our question and test our theory. In addition to the survey, we
conducted a series of interviews to a variety of people, asking them questions pertaining to cell
phones and how they impact their lives, we also did a walk through in the library at Sinclair
Community College in order to observe what devices people were using and how they were
utilizing each device. Afterwards we researched different articles pertaining to our topic to collect

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a variety of data that had already been researched by others in order to broaden our point of
view. We posted our collective survey on a website called, survey monkey and accumulated
responses from classmates, then proceeded with a more in depth survey. The first survey made
by the group was proven inconclusive and revised by myself (Antoneia) in order to reach out to
a broader audience, in age, gender, and quantity. The responses collected from the more in
depth survey came from people outside of class. Once we finished our surveys and had enough
information, we put it all together to see what our results showed. It took quite a bit of time to
compare the ages with the usage of cell phones as well as ages compared to importance of the
cell phone.

Results:The 76 people who took our survey on survey monkey were from our class and for the
most part belong to the younger generation and they use their cell phone for basic
communication the most, then for social media purposes. Each one of us did a more in depth
survey with different individuals outside of class to gather even more information. We found that
the younger generation is very attached to their cell phones. The younger generation relies on
them for different aspects, whereas the older generation isnt as attached to their phones and
wouldnt mind going a day without it.

Keywords: Generations, cell phone usage, cell phone importance,


survey,classmates,technology.

Discussion: The question we were aiming to answer was how do older people use cellphones
differently than younger people at Sinclair? We chose this topic because it is something that
comes up a lot in todays world, mainly because some people feel we are relying too much on
our cellphones and technology in general, also because we were interested in seeing the
difference between the generations. This included seeing how the importance of the cellphone
is different between the older and younger generation, if they could go a day without it, and how
and what they use it for. The team organized a variety of different questions pertaining to the
usage of cellphones and other devices in which we asked each of the interviewees, who were
students of sinclair of all ages and people outside of sinclair.

References:
Lauricella, Alexis R., et al. "The Mobile Generation: Youth And Adolescent Ownership And Use
Of New Media." Communication Research Reports 31.4 (2014): 357-364. Communication &
Mass Media Complete. Web. 2 Oct. 2015.

Porter, Gina, et al. "Intergenerational Relations And The Power Of The Cell Phone: Perspectives
On Young PeopleS Phone Usage In Sub-Saharan Africa." Geoforum 64.(2015): 37-46.
Environment Complete. Web. 1 Oct. 2015.

Leung, Louis1, louis [email protected]. "Generational Differences In Content Generation In


Social Media: The Roles Of The Gratifications Sought And Of Narcissism." Computers In
Human Behavior 29.3 (2013): 997-1006. Education Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 1 Oct. 2015.

Capela, Nicole A., Edward D. Lemaire, and Natalie Baddour. "Feature Selection For Wearable
Smartphone-Based Human Activity Recognition With Able Bodied, Elderly, And Stroke Patients."
Plos ONE 10.4 (2015): 1-18. Food Science Source. Web. 4 Oct. 2015.

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