Leading Voices: Exploring Technology’s Impact on Teens

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Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher at the Pew Internet & American Life Project, is the next speaker in Dartmouth’s “Leading Voices in Higher Education” series.

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Amanda Lenhart is a senior researcher at the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
(Photo courtesy of Amanda Lenhart)

“I’ll be talking about the way  the changing technology environment is shaping, and being shaped by youth, and how that is changing teens’ expectations and experiences,” says Lenhart. “I’ll talk about implications for campus life and connections to home as well as about its impact on the learning process and youth’s expectations for their education—how it’s conducted, and in what manner.”

Lenhart’s talk, “‘How Do (They) Even Do That?’ How Today’s Technology Is Shaping Tomorrow’s Students,” will begin at 4:30 p.m. on April 9 in Rockefeller Center Room 003. An Amherst College graduate, Lenhart directs Pew’s research on teens, children, and families and has appeared before Congress and on NPR and PBS.

“We’ll look at what effects this may be having on youth’s attitudes towards privacy, their desire for physical mobility and constant information access,” says Lenhart.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project, part of the Pew Research Center, conducts research and surveys and annually releases around 15 to 20 reports based on its findings. The nonpartisan project explores the impact of the Internet on families, communities, the workplace, education, health care, and politics.

The “Leading Voices” series started in 2011. The first season, “Leading Voices in Politics and Policy,” brought national political figures, presidential candidates, and policymakers to campus. Last summer’s “Leading Voices in U.S. Foreign Policy” included a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a former Defense Department official, and a retired Navy admiral. The ongoing “Leading Voices in Higher Education” series, part of the strategic planning process, has featured visits from prominent writers, university presidents, and other figures in higher education.

Here is a list of upcoming Leading Voices speakers:

  • April 25: Andrew Delbanco, (the William Jewett Tucker Lecturer for 2013), the Mendelson Family Professor of American Studies and Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities and director of American Studies at Columbia University, speaking on “College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be,” at 4:30 p.m. in Moore Hall’s Filene Auditorium.
  • May 7: Richard DeMillo, distinguished professor of computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the director of the Center for 21st Century Universities, speaking on “Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities” at 4:30 p.m. in the Rockefeller Center Room 003.
Keith Chapman