MeriTalk, an online community focused on US government IT issues, looked at the nexus of technology adoption in personal life vs. work life and published their findings in Consumer Crossover: Me, Myself and IT.
This study looks at adoption of new technologies – such as smart phones, tablets, social media, and cloud storage – in people’s personal lives and at work. Because MeriTalk is a group devoted to US federal employees and IT technology, the people surveyed were limited to that group, however, it seems reasonable to think that findings in this group would largely mimic those of typical university employees as well on this topic.
The study found, not too surprisingly, that people tend to adopt new technologies in their personal lives more quickly than those same technologies are adopted – or embraced – at their workplace. Further, it was noted that employees wish the technologies they use at work would keep up with the technologies they use in their personal lives (67%). Perhaps the most interesting finding in this study is that age was not a primary variable in technology adoption, with 76% of people age 56-66 using online sources for news for more than three years and 63% having used social media for more than three years. Nearly 80% of surveyed people age 56-66 used some form of video conferencing, a slightly larger rate of use than for respondents in the 36-55 age group.
