Yes, I've definitely noticed this trend in young professionals across all industries. It seems especially hard to combat as this kind of communication becomes, increasingly, the primary way that young people express themselves.

I do have a little input...I have noticed with my niece she constantly has a very soleum look on her face and rarely shows emotion however I happened to get on her my space page and could not believe what I was reading..she was extremly emotional on situations that I would have thought she would share with her mother or myself. When confronted about the situations she didn't even show embarresment or give the "deer in the headlights" look she just dismissed all.

I even wonder if kids in their teens stop texting long enough for their PT treatments. Have Clinicians had problems getting teenagers to put down their cell phones during treatments?

Sarah, I am seeing similiar things with my PT students and Facebook. The question is do we adapt to their new communication style, force them to change, or meet them in the middle? I would guess meeting them in the middle, but I think this requires more energy on the instructors to learn new technology and at the same time teach them what effective professional communication is.

That is very interesting! Stacie, is the quote about students from me?? I feel like there is a big difference in a just a small amount of time over the past few years. I may be blinded/biased to my generation (graduated PT school in 03)but I just don't believe this is how my generation was raised. I was probably the last year of not having cell phones in high school. I finally got a "bag" phone in college and had my first real cell phone by the time I graduated. I saw something on the news the other day about a study they are doing and not having highschoolers have their cell phones for 2 weeks or a month or something. It was amazing how it opened their eyes although what they were saying was scarey. One student went to work and without her phone, it took her 20 minutes to read the clock to be able to understand what time it really was. I knew going to calculators was a change but her comments were amazing. You learn that in 1st grade or earlier! Others were commenting on how they acutally had to talk to their boyfriend/girlfriend and they really never did that before and actually took a walk or read a book. One kid does 17,000 texts a month. So about Margaret's response, yes we are seeing texting all the time with our younger patients and they have no idea about the professionalism of the situation. They think it's fine. The funny thing is, is that it doesn't really interrupt treatment because it is so fast, they do it on their rest periods, etc. Their overall communcation is much less though and they are not actively engaged in their rehab.

"I even wonder if kids in their teens stop texting long enough for their PT treatments. Have Clinicians had problems getting teenagers to put down their cell phones during treatments?" I had one young girl that would constantly text after every intervention for her entire time in the clinic. Her mom wouldn't stop her, either. I just learned to keep her constantly on the move so she never had time to text. Worked well.

The article was very interesting Stacie, thanks for passing it on. My experience with the 'millennial' students has been interesting. For the last several years, I have seen a decline in the level of independence in students. Take for example in the electromodalities course. Students get frustrated so easily when they are challenged to learn to use a variety of new devices--even after being shown. There appears to be less proactive energy and more reactive. I am certain that if I gave every student a new cell phone this morning, they would have every feature figured out by midmorning and likely without even opening the manual. Yet, when I ask them to explore some new technology in electromodalities, many students act helpless. This inconsistency challenges me but I am sure every generation poses its unique challenges.