Book Review: A Field Guide to the Net Generation

There has been no shortage of concern about the effects of digital immersion on the current generation of youth. In Grown Up Digital, author, professor, and nGenera Innovation Network chairman Don Tapscott addresses these concerns and finds reason to be optimistic. In this latest book, the sequel to his bestseller Growing Up Digital (1998), Tapscott catches up with the Millennials, whom he renames the “Net Generation”, ten years later. Tapscott’s research (drawing on approximately 10,000 interviews) offers some genuine insights, not to mention more than a few surprising facts (for instance, Net Geners prefer to surf the Web via mobile phones rather than PCs). Another surprising fact is that digital immersion appears to have neurologically enhanced this generation, in effect making Net Geners more intelligent than their elders. “Growing up digital has had a profound impact on the way this generation thinks, even changing the way their brains are wired,” Tapscott writes. For example, research shows that video game players process visual information faster and more comprehensively, and have more highly-developed spatial skills than non-gamers. Tapscott reminds those who still harbor concerns about the long-term effects of digital immersion on the human brain that baby boomers passively consumed a great deal of television during their critical adolescent period of brain development. Adolescent Net Geners, on the other hand, actively engage with media, often in creative ways. Even teenage rebellion is playing itself out more online than in the streets. It’s a symbiotic relationship: Technology may be changing the kids, but the kids, in turn, are changing the technology. This newly wired interactive generation demands an interactive learning model rather than one-way lectures, Tapscott argues. He believes that technology, if applied correctly, can be an “extraordinary teaching tool” and a catalyst to change current pedagogy. “The old educational model might have been suitable for the Industrial Age,” he writes, “but it makes no sense for the new digital economy, or for the new generation of learners.” Tapscott advocates not only Web-based assignments and online learning but actually adapting multi-user virtual environments such as Second Life to serve as teaching tools. He offers advice for employers as well: to attract and retain the best and brightest, they would be wise to break down the old hierarchies and create more collaborative and interactive work environments. This brings us to the book’s fundamental premise: that in order to understand the emergent generation, one must also understand the eight characteristics or “norms” that define it. These are: (1) Freedom (of choice, of expression, freedom to shop, freedom from traditional office hours, etc.); (2) the desire to customize and personalize everything from iPods to job A Field Guide to the Net Generation