How Do Tweens Manage Their Accumulated Everyday Information?

By Author: Tony Allen
Total Articles: 55
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Keeping track of everyday information is an important aspect of use, particularly of reuse. The research team hoped to explore the management dimension as an important aspect of how tweens use and reuse information and of how their access to digital tools (computer software, e-mail, Web browsers, etc.) might affect the ways that they organize their social worlds. Tweens reported different techniques for managing their everyday information, but most relied on Juicy Couture Watch keeping temporary notes (Post-its, writing on hands; 37 percent) and sheer memory (32 percent). While many reported the use of bookmarks and affordances for organizing information within a technology tool, only a few used planners, organizers, or technological tools for personal information management (13 percent). Further probes in the interviews, however, showed that some tweens used unique artifacts and strategies (e.g., homemade calendars and planners or writing on their hands) as memory aids.

Shayla (School) reported using a mnemonic device (self-generated songs) to remember ...
... information, which the researchers found to be clever and unique among the participants. Thirteen participants detailed management strategies that included two or more types. Both Lauren (University) and Peyton (Ministry) said that their schools promote information management by providing calendars or planners as a scaffold. Students are encouraged to write down assignments, schedules, and other school information, but they may also use these tools beyond the classroom for personal information. Peyton added that he uses his school planner to Cheap Juicy Couture track friends' phone numbers and other social information. Four participants specifically noted involving their parents in their information management, either by using a family calendar (Austin [University]), keeping notes by the phone (Kylie [University]), or by telling their parents things they wished to remember themselves, Kylie [University], Madison [University]). This latter group, which included some of the study's youngest participants, admitted to reducing their own cognitive load by allowing parents to manage some of their information. Austin's family calendar is designed to alert both parents and children of social obligations, including play dates and outings, as well as to track rental media due dates. This illustrates that some preteens are conscious of the need for joint information management with adults, who are responsible for, or must at least validate, certain preteen activities. This, however, is an adult management activity in which preteens are asked to participate, not one that preteens necessarily initiate.

Computers were mentioned by only five participants as important information management tools. Ellen further explained that it is important to have an information management strategy that supports retrieval and that writing notes is not always reliable: "I have pieces of paper everywhere. If I write it down, it's sure it's going to get lost." Brenda (School), on the other hand, uses a set of six different diaries to keep track of her information. She described the system she uses to keep track of different kinds of information: I have, like, six diaries at home because every year somebody gives me two diaries or something for my birthday. And so I have one that I have my agenda in, and I have one that I have facts in like math facts and writing facts and stuff like that; and then I have one that's kept for boys and girls, that if I meet somebody new, I write about them. And then I have another one that's, like, like, "Dear Diary, today I did this and this and this and this and this." And then I have another one that's facts that people tell me. And I write it down like, say it was at recess, I'd remember it and when I got in the classroom, I'd write it down on a piece of paper and I'd take that piece of paper home and then that day, right away I would not do my homework, 'cause then I'd forget about the piece of paper and I'd write it down in my diary. Observations of tweens in the computer lab revealed that they often used memorized strategies and common routes to refind Web-based information in the absence of bookmarks.