Adolescence, internet and time: challenges for Education

ABSTRACT The relationship of adolescents with time, how they conceptualize it and use it, has been the focus of numerous studies. The impact of information and communication technologies, diving in the virtual world and the access to the new world offered by the internet have affected this relationship. This is the main purpose of this article: watch this question in the light of the results of a survey of 481 adolescents from Rio de Janeiro. We started showing some teenage concepts and highlighting approaches on the relationship with time in this period of life. Then, we show the conceptual approaches of time on the internet made by authors such as Lèvy, Jenkins and Prensky. In the survey questionnaire one of the requirements was to agree or disagree, justifying the answer, with the statement “The internet really occupies my time.” Most teenagers of the sample agreed with the statement, with reasons related to escaping from reality, the isolation of social life and cognitive effects such as decreased reading and the unreliability of the internet as a research source. Adolescents of this “touch generation” always on the cell phone, connected to the internet, who have evolved in the use of digital technologies of interaction for integration, measure time in a new way. It is the responsibility of education knowing how to deal with this teens and it is the responsibility of institutions that train teachers to prepare them for this fascinating challenge of educating them.