The 'Net Generation' Isn't

Kanel introduces this lengthy review in Spiegel Online this way: "Kids that grew up with the Internet are not 'digital natives' as consultants have led us to believe. They're OK with the Net but they don't care much about Web 2.0 and find plenty of other things more important than the Internet. Consultants and authors, mostly old guys, have called for the education system to be reworked to suit this new generation, but they never conducted surveys to see if the members of 'generation @' were anything like what they had envisioned. Turns out, children who have known the Net their whole lives are not particularly skilled at it, nor do they live their lives online." "Young people have now reached this turning point. The Internet is no longer something they are willing to waste time thinking about. It seems that the excitement about cyberspace was a phenomenon peculiar to their predecessors, the technology-obsessed first generation of Web users. ...they certainly no longer understand it when older generations speak of 'going online.' ... Tom and his friends just describe themselves as being 'on' or 'off,' using the English terms. What they mean is: contactable or not."

Comments

Re:evidence?

[longhairedgnome]

The Ivory Tower does nothing!

Re:evidence?

[Totenglocke]

The people who don't care to learn anything about a computer are the ones who break them, yes, even Mac's.

That was the point I was making and the point you missed. People who do not care to take the time and effort to learn about their "magic tool" will not take care of it and will abuse it. This applies quite well to cars, which is why you see the morons who think that it's somehow a good idea to drive six inches off someones bumper at 80 mph - because they didn't bother to learn enough about how cars work to know that a car won't be able to stop that fast, even if you could react instantly.