…And if you’re hooked into an iPod, talking on a cell phone, and instant messaging a friend while you’re reading this article, you’re definitely a millennial. Millennials—people who were born in or after 1982, just after the first IBM PC was invented—make up most of today’s college students.

Each generation is defined by certain events and characteristics. Millennials, perhaps more than any other factor, are defined by their level of comfort with rapidly evolving personal technology. For this group, computers aren’t considered technology any more than a book or a pad and pencil were a mere 10 years ago. These students were double-clicking and multitasking before they were tall enough to go on all the rides at Disney World.

With PCs an accustomed part of daily life and a new type of personal communication device popping up seemingly every week, students are connected nonstop, 24/7, and have access to instant information no matter where they are. It has affected the way they communicate and the way they learn, for better or worse. ("Their brains are wired differently," as one Saint Anselm professor says.)

At a college where the majority of students are 18-to-22-year-olds living on campus, this reality affects both social and academic life. While Saint Anselm is no different from other colleges in this respect, its situation is unique.

"As a Benedictine institution, we are part of a tradition that values community," says Fr. Augustine Kelly, O.S.B., dean of the college. "I see the isolating experience of being always attached to one’s computer or iPod as detrimental to the type of community that we’ve always embraced. The incessant stimulation that individuals crave detracts from human interaction and affects them spiritually as well as relationally and intellectually. They don’t give themselves the chance, or they are afraid to, simply sit back and reflect."

In the classroom, he adds, technology is a double-edged sword: "It’s wonderful, but it needs to be monitored and moderated in order to deliver the type of education we have here." Faculty meetings are filled with discussion of new issues of academic honesty, such as humanities papers that are "cut and paste jobs" from the Internet, and students text messaging answers during chemistry exams.

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