Have College Freshmen Changed?

Lafalum84
Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:53:44 +0000

And cell phone, cable, internet access, and healthcare are all pretty much standard/required for today’s world. Healthcare costs are a much higher percentage of today’s family budget than in decades past.

I also agree that cell phones, internet, etc have made this a much more interconnected world - all of us are probably more closely tied to relatives who live far away than previous generations. Why wouldn’t we also be more closely tied to our kids at college?
Of course there is the potential for that to go overboard, and kids need to learn to make their own decisions and live with the consequences. But if they want to ask for advice, or share good news or bad, why shouldn’t they be able to?

I think the bottom line is this: if the technology had existed in previous generations (cell phones, internet), then I think the previous generations would have been much more connected to one another. When there was only one pay phone on a hallway, interactions with parents from college were naturally limited. One can argue whether more connectedness is better or worse, but I don’t doubt that if the ability to communicate easily had existed in previous decades, people would have used it.

As for kids moving back home, in previous generations kids never left their hometown. Multiple generations of families lived within a few miles of each other. Now people move all over the country. Johnny may live with mom and dad for a couple years after college, but 10 years later he may easily be living 1000+ miles away.