Also reviewed here: Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, Basic, 375 pages, $27.95
What's going on with the kids? Are they really as vulnerable to online sex fiends, violent role playing games, and Internet porn as hysterical media reports suggest? Are the latest generations really attention deficit zombies addicted to nonsensical IM chatter, unfit to do anything but ; ) and LOL?
Two new books try to answer these questions and paint a picture of the digital youth. The authors of Born Digital are Harvard law chums John Palfrey and Urs Gasser (who also teaches in Switzerland). They survey the terrain, coin a few largely irrelevant catch phrases, and exit smugly, assuring themselves in a concluding, supposedly spontaneous, e-mail exchange that they've opened the door for dialogue and understanding.
Meanwhile, long-time tech prognosticator Don Tapscott brings us Grown Up Digital. In it, he surveys the terrain and provides point-form instructions on how educators, employers, parents and governments might successfully interact with the Net Generation. His is the better, more focused book.
Still, neither book quite manages to convince me that the "Digital Natives" or "Net Generation" are particularly unique and likely to change the world. True, they're adeptly utilizing the opportunities that have emerged for them, but so are many other people of varying ages. And, as with everyone navigating the digital age, it remains to be seen if the technology is shaping the "Net Generation," or they are shaping the technology.
In Born Digital, we never really find out much about the lives of this "first generation of Digital Natives." That's because this book is really a boilerplate survey of issues germane to the Internet age. Though the authors repeatedly allude to focus groups and research, and even claim to have spoken to "hundreds of parents and teachers," quotes from young people about what they do and why they do what they do probably occupy about three pages total. There is no indication that the writers went to the homes, schools and (cyber) hangouts of the generation they are purporting to write about.
Instead of evidence and firsthand observation, we're offered platitudes: "Very often Digital Natives have better computer skills than their parents, and this means they can be more helpful in keeping computers safe from harmful images than parents and teachers can." Not only does this sentence make no sense, it is accompanied by nothing in the way of substantiation, whether anecdotal or anthropological.
The law professors are on firmer ground when writing about legal issues such as copyright and some aspects of privacy, but overall this book offers scant insight into the minds of a generation of text-messagers and MySpacers.
Tapscott's Grown Up Digital — follow up to his mid-'90s tome Growing Up Digital — is, by contrast, a book far more grounded in actual firsthand research. So what does Tapscott conclude about the Net Generations? They are a generation of quick thinking, tech savvy "prosumers" unafraid of hard work (provided they can work collaboratively and creatively). They are a generation that demands honesty and transparency from their governments and corporations. They are socially engaged, activist minded, and have been working for change almost as soon as they learned to type. They are so talented and forward thinking that they are surely going to change the world for the better, and those not on the Net Generation bandwagon had better figure out a way to get on before they get left behind. "The bottom line is this: if you understand the Net Generation, you will understand the future. You will also understand how our institutions and society need to change today."
If all this sounds a bit over the top, well, it is. I don't think I've ever read a more positive book. Tapscott can see only good in the generation of teens and 20-somethings that he's sure will soon take over the world. He dismisses the idea that they are narcissistic, poo-poohs any notion they are spending so much time online that they have disconnected from the real world. He even defends the fact that the Net Generations are considerably less likely to read books.
