Rise Of The 15-Year Olds, Part II

I know a bit about geeky 15-year-olds; I've written a book and a number of articles about them. I get a couple of hundred e-mails from them daily. They have time, energy and particular physical and mental skills for gaming, developing software and navigating the Net. They are smart, creative, and know the inner workings of the the Net and the Web better than any other sub-set of the species. They do, in fact, have access to unprecedented amounts of information. Few parents, teachers, pols or reporters have any clear idea what these kids are doing online, or just how significant cultures like gaming and coding have become. Note: second in a series -- you can also read the first .

Small wonder the kids believe that older people have little or nothing to teach or tell them. It's often seemed true. The Net fosters a "Hey, I can do this, too" value system.

Sometimes, the outsiders, younger than most successful business executives, score big -- with successes like Netscape, Gnutella, Linux, IM, WinAmp. Even though they're more than 15, Lewis would argue that such pioneers help drive the status revolution. But they're exceptions, too.

Look at the allegedly-overturned powerful institutions and their upstart rivals. The music industry is in less trouble than Napster. Microsoft still makes far more money than Open Source systems. The broadcast network's audience steadily erodes, but their evening news shows still have greater reach and clout than Matt Drudge.

The strengths of 15-year-olds are also their weaknesses. Certain traits of the Net-connected 15-year old form recognizable patterns. They tend to confuse hostility with communication; they shoot (or type) before they think. They can be arrogant and posturing as well as creative and energetic. They are sometimes narcissistic: they fixate on "me" media, blocking and filtering people and ideas they don't like or agree with. Too often, they see reality only as what they (or the people on their mailing lists, blogs or p2p forums) think.

Although they consider themselves ferocious defenders of free speech, in theory, in practice many find differing opinions infuriating. Online, they have not grown up in a civil culture. Often, their hostility is a posture, a veneer.

They have profound, impressive grounding in technology, gaming and software, but big blank spots in many other areas of knowledge, including history, politics, mainstream culture -- fields not necessary to navigating online but definitely helpful in running the world.

No question they're among the leaders of the technological revolution spawned in cyberspace. But they are also kids, unprepared for the political, civic, ethical and headaches of leadership, or the responsibility that comes with running institutions. The first generation of computer kids is now running the tech world, and they've been universally sobered by the realities of economics and politics.

Does childhood end when computers come into their lives, as Jonathan Lebed's father laments in "Next"? I suspect there's some truth to the idea that things can get lost and values skewed when any single value system or interest -- computing, sports, music -- overwhelms a person's days and nights and crowds out everything else. The computer geeks and nerds I know seem healthiest to me when other powerful things in their lives help keep them grounded: close relationships with friends and parents, religion, a passion for chess, dogs, hiking ... whatever.

Despite the widening cultural gap, I still think older people have some things to teach them. One of the surreal things about being a kid, of course, is that you have no idea what you don't know or might need. Life's lessons and experiences, along with history, ethics and context, can be invaluable, and they're hard for 15-year-olds to come by on their own. The reality isn't so much that kids are taking over the world, but that the world has sometimes made them technological orphans, abandoned them to sophisticated machinery that few adults bother to comprehend.

Margaret Mead wrote years ago that the pace of cultural change in the West was accelerating so rapidly that the young were coming to believe they had nothing to learn from their elders. And that was before the Net. Her prediction has been fulfilled, more than even she imagined.

(Next -- Your feedback.)

Comments

well, while Katz worships 15-year-olds ..

[X-Dopple]

... as a 16-year-old, I've been having a lot of trouble finding a job. Everyone is:

-not hiring
-wants an MCSE or a CNE or any other BS certification
-wants a college degree for tech suppr0t

I've sent my resume out to five different companies and haven't heard back from one. I've had my friends check their connections to different people. No one is hiring. Drives me nuts.

Really, only Katz thinks that 15-year-olds are the leaders of the Net. I think that everyone is working against me. :P While I was a bit arrogant at 15, I certainly didn't filter out anybody I didn't like.