The Longest Day

"And, what can you do for a lot of that time?" I asked loudly with a big smile, bending at the knees and opening my arms like an overly optimistic cheerleader when the junior varsity is down by 13 points in the fourth quarter.

"Sleep!" came the chorus of voices after barely a beat.

"Yes!" I responded. "You can sleep; you can read; you can have conversations. In person!"

"Can we eat?" someone asked, to laughter.

IN RETROSPECT, PERHAPS THAT LAST QUESTION WASN'T AS RIDICULOUS AS IT SOUNDED. Eighteen- to 20-year-olds know in their hearts that electronic media are nearly as dear to their lives as physical nourishment. They have vague memories of a time before iTunes, personalized ring tones, Facebook, Google, Rocketboom, "MySpace: The Movie" and www.i-am-bored.com. But like their contemporaries, the Olsen twins, whom they watched grow up in the media, they are no longer innocent. They have tasted the pleasures brought by binary code, and, like most of us, they're not into deprivation.

Could my students, in fact, survive "the grueling pain that was the 24-hour, e-media fast," as one self-described iPod and computer addict would later write in her paper?

The 50 young women and men in my class at AU are what are called digital natives or "millennials," those born between 1980 and 2000, many of whom graduated from high school as the 21st century dawned. Researchers say they will constitute the largest generation in American history, outnumbering baby boomers by as much as 33 percent.

Millennials grew up thinking that computers were as much a part of the family room furniture as my generation thought televisions were. While we boomers have had to change our thinking entirely from its static analog map of reality, their generation has always been comfortable with the malleable, non-physical terrain of electronic networks. They started life with VCRs and CDs and led the charge to digital video and MP3s. They were the first generation to link up through cellphones and instant messages. Personal computers came of age as they were born, and they grew up with the World Wide Web and e-mail, not to mention Nintendo, Game Boy, Sony PlayStation, GameCube and Xbox. They are the demographic that marketers love to court, but they can be elusive to advertisers tied to old media.

And yet, even though they are savvy, articulate, emotionally attached and educated consumers of electronic media, millennials don't actually think much about it. At the beginning of the semester, my students seemed surprised to learn they are trail-

blazers in a time of great upheaval in the media world. But they became painfully aware once forced to unplug.

"I was in shock," wrote one student. "I honestly did not think I could accomplish this task. The 24 hours I spent in what seemed like complete isolation became known as one of the toughest days I have had to endure."

Another student apparently did not see the irony in this statement: "I felt like I would be wasting my time doing the project. I did not want to give up my daily schedule, which mainly includes lying on my couch, watching television and playing The Sims2 -- a [life simulator] computer game."