http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Always Online: Mobile Technology and Social Media Usage by Modern Teenagers at Home and at School D. Koroleva Diana Koroleva Analyst, Center for Leadership in Edu- cation, Institute of Education, National Research University—Higher School of Economics. E-mail: dkoroleva@hse.ru Address: 20 Myasnitskaya str., 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation. Abstract. Students of Moscow schools and other educational institutions be- tween the ages of 16 and 18 years old were surveyed to assess how Russian schools use modern methods of e-learn- ing, mobile technologies, and social me- dia in the learning process. The sample covered 3,194 respondents. The study describes three waves of Russian school informatization and the challenges the system has been facing over the last ive years: the extensive use of mobile phones and PDAs with high-speed ac- cess to the Internet by students and the active use of social media services for communication, search, and the storage of information. The article demonstrates the obvious progress of the schooling system: present-day teachers commu- nicate with their students via email and social networks and occasionally give homework assignments to be done on- line or using Internet services. Yet, the school remains an extremely conserva- tive institution. The education system is insensitive to the rapid development of technologies, and the process of mod- ernization is essentially inhibited by sticking to conventional teaching prac- tices and ignoring innovative ones. Keywords: school, innovation in edu- cation, social media, teenagers, e-learn- ing, informatization of education, ICT, digital technologies. DOI: 10.17323/1814-9545-2016-1-205-224 The article was prepared using the data of a panel longitudinal study entitled “Trajectories in Education and Career” as part of Research Project No. 14-06- 00735 supported by the Russian Foundation for Humanities and co- funded by the HSE Academic Fund. Received in August 2015 According to an OECD report, Russia is ranked 5th among 2 coun- tries in the overall level of innovation in school education [OECD, 2014]. The list of nine innovations in Russian school education in- cludes, among other things, encouraging a more active use of com- puters as a source of information in the learning process and provid- ing access to the Internet in class. The OECD data does not relect the existing situation; instead, it focuses on the progress the educa- tion system made in 1–2011. This suggests that the government’s programs for computerizing and later informatizing school education, which were launched in the mid‑180s, have achieved their goals at least in part. Meanwhile, computer and Internet services have made much progress over the last ive years. Education has been witness- ing such trends as using PDAs, mobile apps, social media, and other types of e‑learning. The eiciency of using these innovative practic-