Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation

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Summary: Growing Up Digital
Review: Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation By Don Tapscott

Book Review: Linda Larson Pepperdine University Doctoral Student

Armed with their digital devices, the Net Generation, 80 million strong and aged 2-22, is not content to recline in an easy chair or couch and take in the baby boomers' equivalent of broadcasted episodes of Gunsmoke. The N-Geners (Net Generation) expect the power to decide, when they watch the episode, when they pick-up their digital six-gun and when they become an active participant in the action. They might interact with the computer or with other net savvy kids. The digital revolution has created a generation with unbridled access to information and communication. Their parents, according to Tapscott, are searching to understand this new technology, while their digital savvy kids control the technology with ease.

The N-Geners gladly surrender the remote control to Dad. They want to exchange this antique remote technology for the thrill of the computer joystick. Interactivity is the mantra of the N-Generation. They expect their access to media technology to be on demand and interactive. They are accustomed to role-playing in video games. Their participation might be at home, with the computer as an opponent, or with a virtual teammate who is on-line. This player(s) could be across the globe or across the street. They are interacting with the media, as opposed to passively watching television. One way this interactivity is emerging is through the use of the Internet. The growth of the Net is matching the growth of television in households in the 1950s.

Is the Net Generation's use of computers and technology just limited to entertainment? Certainly, it is not. N-Geners use computers for numerous aspects of their lives: learning, communicating, shopping, and personal management. For example, they actively communicate on-line. Many of them prefer this to television because adults control television content. In fact, Tapscott points out that by the year 2000 children will be watching 100 hours less television. N-Geners find new freedom where they are active and communicative. In the on-line environment, they are reading and responding to e-mail messages. In on-line communities, they can play different roles and create multiple selves. They can try out ideas in virtual worlds and if they make a mistake, they can always change identities. On-line, virtual communities are also formed without regard to physical proximity. Some kids even have cyber-dates. They can built a web site to share with the world or search for information of interest by utilizing the World Wide Web as a digital library.

I enjoyed many of the insights offered by Tapscott, but I also feel compelled to point to one of the shortcomings of the book. I see some limitations in the sampling that Tapscott and his contributors used to arrive at their findings and the all-encompassing generalizations. This is really evident in regard to the techo-savvy of all the children born during or after 1977. He needs to address more thoroughly the population of kids that do not have access to technology or that have limited access. He never really addresses to my satisfaction how they fit into his scenario.

Even with the above limitations, I believe that parents, educators, and businesses people who will soon be interacting with the Net-Generation can obtain many useful insights by reading Tapscott's Growing Up Digital. Tapscott supplies a myriad of ways using examples, interviews and studies, that the N-generation surpasses the previous generations in their use of technology; however, the fundamental question still is are kids are really all that different growing up in the digital environment? If they are, this has serious implications as this generation enters college and the work force.

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Summary: Net Geners Seize the Day and the Future
Review: Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation. Don Tapscott 1998.

Tapscott acknowledges and celebrates that "The Children of a Digital Age" are reconfiguring our work environments, relationships, educational systems and learning modes, concepts of citizenship and democracy, and our present and future.

Tapscott, author of "Digital Economy" and others, President of New Paradigm Learning Corporation and chairman of a think tank funded by leading technology and government organizations, offers an insiders view of the "Net Generation".

The "N-Geners" are over 88 million strong and represent the largest demographic group in the United States and Canada. They are the pioneering generation growing up immersed in the ubiquitous new digital media - computers, the Internet, CD-ROMs, video games and more. Forget a childhood of imaginary playmates - "Net Geners" now use their imaginations and technology skills to communicate across the Web, ignoring limitations of location and time via digital media. Major themes explored in "Growing Up Digital" include social transformation, democracy and citizenship, the nature of education, learning, business, communication and interactivity in the digital media era.

Tapscott approaches this post "Smells like Teen Spirit" Nirvana-generation with sheer fascination and importantly, respect. Tapscott's strength is his willingness to listen. As a young "N-Gener" interviewee points out, she feels that adults take her opinion more seriously because she may know more about technology than they do. The Net interview discussions with 300 youth between the age of four and twenty, led by a research team leader all of 24 years old, produced fascinating insights into our future - who we are and who will be as students, teachers, workers, citizens, consumers. Tapscott's exuberance for our collective "brave new world" as a digital media-shaped society is tempered by an acknowledgement of the widening global digital divide. He points out that "N-Geners" may end up a fractured society of Information Haves and Have-Nots - a situation all too reminiscent of inequalities not new to this century.

Need to catch up on your children's or your students' tech lingo? Why can your daughter or son access and manage these technologies with grace and a sense of play while the rest of us and our last century contemporaries secretly scratch our heads? Written in 1998, Tapscott's book is a manual for the 21st century. Other academicians may research these areas from a deeper scholarly, research-oriented perspective. Tapscott offers an enjoyable and illuminating read for educators, parents, business moguls - anyone with a vested interest in joining in the information revolution - everyone except "Net Geners" themselves - they already know...

Teresa Grenot
Doctoral Student
Pepperdine University

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Summary: Don't Read. Tapscott loses his credibility early in.
Review: I had high hopes for this book. I was very disappointed. The only good side to this book is the demographics, but even now I am doubted the validity of those. Tapscott early on tells the reader that this book was a complilation of net users and the internet generation's opinions. Some of the quotes said by the children is hard to imagine. THe quotes are edited entirely, and his opinions on the internet age is too baised. He is looking at the internet as a man who is 100 years old - before the conception of the internet. Don't read if you know something about the internet. Others can read it as a fantasy. In fact, some portions of the book are so far-fetched that would make good comedy at a University lecture for computer majors.

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Summary: I agree with Tapscott's views - especially in education.
Review: I liked this book. Don Tapscott adequately discusses the importance of the Net Generations' influence on our society's education system, culture, government, and commerce. I agree with the author's view of the importance of computers and the internet with this new generation. Our children are growing up with this technology and aren't afraid of it at all - in fact, they are embracing it. This technology encompasses every part of their lives, just as the TV did in the children in the 1950's. It seems all throughout history, people are reluctant to new ideas and change. They purposely resist anything that drastically changes their environment. I liked how Tapscott addresses this issue and discusses the many positive effects of technology on the Net Generation. He addresses many current issues about the internet: What do children use computers for?, Are children benefiting from the use of computers?, Does technology improve the process of learning?, and many other issues. In Tapscott's opinion, the Net Generation is benefiting immensely from the use of computers and I agree with him.

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Summary: Finally, a true representation.
Review: I'm a 17 year old from Toronto (an "N-gener"). When I picked up a copy of this book, I expected to find what I always see - a skewed, assumtion-based, innacurate view of how people my age think and act, written by an "adult" who thinks they know. What this book is, in fact, is an extremely real representation of how kids feel about technology. I was pleasantly surprised (to say the least). I'd love to thank Tapscott for writing this book, so that people can hear what's really going on from an established, respected source.

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Summary: a balanced and optimistic view of our "digital kids"
Review: I'm already a fan of Don Tapscott's work and philosophy from The Digital Economy and Paradigm Shift. But Growing Up Digital is my favorite so far. Like the kids profiled in the book, the material is fresh, thought-provoking and offers a balanced and optimistic view. The reality of the technological fluency of those considerably younger is just beginning to felt in the educational and business worlds. I'd read this book to get a head start on thinking through the implications and possibilities created by a "Net Generation".

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Summary: Growing Up Digital
Review: In his book "Growing up Digital", Don Tapscott introduces to us a new generation of computer users-the N-Gen generation. Unlike Baby Boomers and Generation Xers, N-Geners are growing up in an interactive world, a world where the phrase "technological revolution" means as little to them as "Woodstock" or "The Cold War". By interviewing a mixed group of more than 300 N-Geners, Tapscott presents different ways N-Geners develop, learn, think, interact, react, work and play. From his interviews and observations, Tapscott makes some general observations and predictions about the ways the media, educational systems, corporations and consumers will change to accommodate them.

"Growing up Digital" begins with a discussion on the differences between the N-Gen generation and those before it. The most significant of the differences is the interactivity and self-directed learning that is available to N-Geners via the Internet. As a whole, N-Geners do not watch nearly as much television as their parents did. Also, because of the wide-range of services available on-line, and the ability to comparison shop at the click of a button, this generation seeks information and expects "the best for less."

Tapscott then dedicates separate chapters for the way the N-Gen generation thinks, works, learns, plays, shops and interacts with their families. Throughout the chapters he supports his findings with direct quotes from N-Geners and excerpts from "chat room" dialogues. Common misconceptions and concerns about kids abusing the Internet and becoming socially inept are addressed. In fact, Tapcsott discusses how computers and the Internet can be useful tools for interactive learning, social development and multi-tasking.

Also discussed in "Growing up Digital" is current state and outcome of using computers as learning tools in the classroom, and the roles corporations can play to support the development of the skills of their future employees. The existence of a "generation gap" between the N-Gen generation and the generations before them, combined with a "digital divide" amongst their own generation, are the among the challenging of the challenges facing N-Geners.

The last chapter of "Growing Up Digital" is entitled "Leaders of the Future", and begins in the following way, "As N-Gen comes of age, what kind of world will they create? They are the best-informed and most active generation ever. These young people will dominate most of the twenty-first century. As they take, transform, or smash the reins of power, culture and social development, what can we expect? What values will they hold? How will they shape the world?" (page 281)

Tapscott predicts we will see the most influential changes in the way businesses are re-shaped to become more open and less hierarchical. Customers will dictate the way products and services are catered to them. Teams will become global and business will occur across new boundaries and borders. Proactive "twenty-first century" companies and organizations will embrace change and seek to truly understand N-Geners as they enter the workforce-and the most successful of them all will empower the N-Generation with access to the technology that will truly help them grow.

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Summary: Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation
Review: In this book, Don Tapscott discusses the differences between the baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) and the "Net Generation" (those born between 1977 and 1997). In Growing up Digital, Tapscott reminds us that boomers consists of 85 million people in the United States and Canada and then informs us that the Net Generation now encompasses 88 million people. So not only are these kids more technologically savvy than the rest of us, they outnumber us also. Tapscott states, "To them the digital technology is no more intimidating than a VCR or toaster. For the first time in history, children are more comfortable, knowledgeable and literate than their parents about an innovation central to society." With this in mind, it is probably a good thing I read this book.

Interestingly, I have two teenage children who fit into the category of Net Generation kids, but who do not have as much in common with the kids described in the book as Tapscott would lead you to believe. The children I know in this age-group are computer literate, do have cyber-dates, are quite capable of multi-tasking, completing research via the net, and ordering products on-line. However, that is where the similarity ends.

Tapscott describes a world where children work for pay creating web sites; expect to be included in the decision-making of major purchases with their parents, (because the children have been able to download the product research that their parents could not), and speak at conferences on the use of technology. I believe there are many instances in the book where Tapscott suggests a behavior that appears more precocious than intelligent. Even given this, the book is very interesting, but at times reads more like science fiction. This is especially true when Tapscott talks about a "cyber Niki" running around the web searching for the best buys or when he gives an example of being able to order his bread from the Stone Mill bakery with just the ingredients he wants. At times, it is hard to tell whether this is currently available via the web or, if it is all part of a future vision.

Because much of the information for this book came from a chat room for teens and pre-teens called "FreeZone" it tends to preclude those children of the same age who are not growing up digital or, who have limited access to this medium. Moreover, if this is so, are we any wiser to the behaviors and thought processes of the majority of American children? I am not so sure. According to Mr. Tapscott we are. He states that, "This book is based on the belief that we can learn much about a whole generation which is in the process of embracing the new media from the children who are most advanced in their adoption of this technology." Maybe he is right, because the information gleaned from this particular group of kids is rather enlightening.

In the book, Tapscott discusses the different ways N-Gens learn, play and work. Supposedly, this group prefers interactive entertainment (video games and web surfing) to passive entertainment (television). In fact, Tapscott estimates that by the year 2000 children will be watching 100 hours less television per year than they were in 1997. Based on discussions with the kids in FreeZone, it appears that N-Gen children prefer to play video games, and spend time on the web because they can control what they see rather than having content pushed at them. Tapscott believes that this is actually good, not bad, as many would have us believe. This is probably true, because in order to navigate the web, you must be able to read and write. In the chapter on N-Gen learning, Tapscott discusses that these children will want to learn in an interactive mode rather than a broadcast mode. One- way to do this would be for these children to discover information on their own via the web instead of listening to lectures. And, when it comes to the work environment, watch out, "Just like the boomers in Michael Dell's company who are perceived as losers if they aren't media-savvy and new-enterprise-comfortable, boomers in the new economy will be left behind as the N-Gen tsunami rolls into the workforce. The message: boomers, get going and learn from the children." According to this, the workplace of the future will be highly technical and if we are not prepared, the N-Gens will leave us behind.

With so many kids already working in technology fields, how should colleges and universities prepare? Well one thing is certain, as long as kids feel the need to go to college to advance within an organization we are okay. The following quote from an 18 year old makes this perfectly clear. He states: "Right now the Internet department is doing some shuffling and I could easily become a full-time employee. My boss loves me and she knows I am more than capable for the help line, but without some kind of college degree I would not go far in the organization. I hope to return in four years." Let us all keep them thinking this way and maybe we can keep our jobs.

Overall, I found this to be an excellent book and feel it may be helpful for many who are dealing with or may soon be dealing with these kids, especially the techno-savvy ones.

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Summary: Shifting paradigms
Review: Just when I thought I had a handle on the n-gen's way of thinking and communicating, Tapscott reveals even more insights. GUD is a paradigm shifting read. Every educator and parent of n-gen kids should read it more than once.

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Summary: Best of the best.
Review: Maybe my expectations were too high based on the reviews. I found most of the information in this book to be news items. Also, anyone that follows technology in the news will not find much insight into this book. The book is an overview of how the younger generation uses technology in their social lives, play and work. If you are not very familiar with the internet and don't watch the news this book would be worthwhile. However, anyone who uses the internet and keeps up on the news won't get much out of it.