Cohen is quick to explain. "Of course you can be great in person. If we're IM-ing with someone, then when we see them, the contact's enhanced, not stilted. We're stronger socially. It's not like you've forgotten how to speak English; you've just spoken very carefully selected English."
While it's about a decade too soon to know with certainty how these friendships will evolve, whether they will be stronger and longer lasting than earlier bonds, it's not too soon to assess the immediate impact of the digital connection.
All day and all of the night
The good news first: The IM culture has given shy students who might ordinarily have spent four miserable years quasi-mute a chance to develop connections with classmates once deemed unapproachable. If friendships do not follow, at least there's the basis for a hello in the hallway. "Even if there's still the social hierarchy," Marani says, "at least it's more flexible. IM, MySpace, that's where our friendships start, and who knows how they'll develop." Cohen adds, "Think about on a college campus, where it's thousands of kids, you know that could be pretty powerful."
The list of more practical advantages runs as long as the average buddy list. 1) Online, you can meet and swap photos with your camp bunkmates or prospective college roommates. 2) You no longer veg out watching TV, instead TiVo-ing the few things you might want in the background while doing homework. 3) If someone seems to be in trouble, there are no longer just one or two good friends to the rescue but hundreds who send support via e-mail messages, instant messages and text messages. 4) Students study together online. Then the day of the test, those who take it earlier pass the topics covered — if not the answers — to those who take the class later. (All this via texting from a bathroom stall.)
All of this leads to yet another question: Where do they get the time? Many students these days get home from school only after club meetings, sports events and play rehearsals. Factoring in dinner and unavoidable discussion with parents, that would seemingly leave time only for homework. Most, though, claim to spend upward of three hours online, pausing to do homework or doing both simultaneously. None of the students interviewed for this article said their grades had dropped because of their computer habits, and they could not think of anybody else's that had, either.
Some New York City teachers report a renewed rigor in study hall, where students work against the clock to finish their night's assignments. Students say they use every possible minute to chip away at extra work. (A small sign of the times: Some lockers are not decorated as intensely as in years past. There's no time, and many students save their best design impulses for MySpace or Facebook pages.)
Still, there is a lot of work to be done at home, and often it is done after midnight. Members of Generation M do not seem to sleep as much as their boomer parents did. If some of those parents once carried Visine to hide telltale marijuana eyes, their offspring use it to suggest they were not, in fact, up at 4am resolving 12 best-friend conflicts and 10 geometric proofs (at the same time).
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