Technology revolution has reached American teachers from middle and secondary school that have been using different kind of technologies to support their teaching and findings.  According to one survey applied by Pew Internet, they have mentioned that due to the education trends they have to centralize their teaching on digital technologies.  American teachers have reported as well that there is an important gap to get access to the latest technologies in the market by students from different social and income status depending on the district that they are assigned to teach.  Around 92% of these teachers have said that internet has a larger impact on their capacity to access to different resources and content to support their teaching.  We are approaching the future in which the lack of access to digital tools will represent an important challenge to overcome as the lack of resources for low income students limit their chances to have access to all the databases, online libraries and different digital tools that could change their learning curve and experience in the future.

American´s reading habits have been changing over the years as the internet has revolutionized the way of reading and finding information.  The increasing popularity of e-books and mobile devices has been affecting American habits but also the libraries have been suffering as well in order to keep the pace of the technology competition.  According to Pew Internet Research, 50% of American adults have mentioned the internet as the main reference for national and international news while social media does not represent one of the main references of news for the American users.

It is important that we should take into consideration what are the effects in the future of using technology and social media instead of going to the library or buy a hard copy of one of the best sellers of the year.  By using internet to do any kind of research can make your life much easier whilst it could be reflected as a poor research considering that you can find most of the information online instead of going to the library and consult different sources.  I believe that we should be aware and precautions of using the internet tools and social media wisely and never lose the habits of reading a hard copy book that could bring you a different learning experience.

Around 66% of online adults use different kind of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.  The common use for this population is to use this social media tools to connect with family members and friends around the world, and it could be connections from the past or just new.  Nearly two thirds of the social media users in the survey applied by Pew Research Center mentioned that one of the main reasons of using social media is to stay in contact with current family and friends, and half of the population mentioned that they use social media to try to find and connect with old friends they have lost communication in the past.  Some of the people also mentioned that making new friends by using social media is important as the previous factors.  One of the highlights of this survey is that two-thirds of the population that mentioned that they use social media to stay connected with their family members come from different backgrounds in terms of age, income, education, race, and ethnicity.  Therefore, we can conclude that social media is connecting people from all over the world no matter where you come from or who you are.  Nowadays, thanks to the technology you could find friends or connections from the past and continue building you networking.

The number of social networking site users continues to grow
from the last years, reflecting that 72% of online US adults are using any of
the social media sites available online.
According to this survey when they started asking about social media in
2005 only 8% of online adults mentioned that they have used social media. 

Over the years we have seen an impressive change in adults´behaviour who are commited and well prepared to be part of the social media world.  Nowadays, if you want to be part of certain specific social media circles or societies you have to be aware on how to use social networking sites and also is an important activity for internet users in order to be informed in terms of social and professional issues.

Social networking has become extremely popular among older adults.   As we can see from the survey 6 out of 10 internet users ages 50-64 are social networking site users considering that 43% of these adults are 65 years old and older.  By comparing these numbers with the past, we can realize how the adults´ behavior is moving towards a more technology profile in order to keep updated in their jobs and to avoid being replaced for the new generations which are experts and active users in every social networking site.

Teens are sharing more information about themselves on social media sites than they did in the past, the numbers are quite impressive.  The recent trend which is driven by the fast evolution of the platforms teens use as well as modifying norms and regulations about how, when, where and why sharing the information is becoming a casual issue among teens and they are not concerned on the future implications of sharing information on social media.

The following graph shows the results from a report based on a survey of 802 teens that explores teen´s privacy management on social media sites and the results were really shocking.  Between 2006 and 2012 teens are sharing more information about themselves on social media than they did in the past.

• 91% post a photo of themselves, from 79% in 2006
• 71% post their school name from 49% in 2006
• 53% post their email address, from 29% in 2006
• 71% post their school name, from 49%

As we can see these numbers are reflecting teens´ behavior in terms of privacy concerns.  Are the teens aware of the risk that they are exposed? Apparently not, teens are only concern on sharing their social life to the world without even thinking about the consequences of this behavior.

As an overall, 40% of teen social media users mentioned that they are “very” concerned that part of the information they post in social media could be seen by third parties such as media advertisers or any other kind of publishers that are looking for targets in their businesses and teens are birds of prey as they are sharing publicly as much information as they can in the different social media sites.  In contrast with the 40% just 9% mentioned that they are “very” concerned about sharing the information online.

In addition to these results, parents were also part of the survey and they were ask about the amount of information that the advertisers can learn about their child´s behavior on social media and 81% of the parents mentioned to be “very” concerned about all the information that is online that could affect the integrity and security of their children.

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