Penguin Books Australia

Chapter 2: The digital generation gap

The internet is a public space that's open 24/7 and is as big as the world – in fact, it has no boundaries at all. Parents are dutifully setting up broadband networks in their own homes, oblivious to the fact that they are providing their children with the means to go anywhere. We're standing on the docks waving goodbye as our kids travel to Cyberia, a limitless, mostly lawless land in which we are often clueless foreigners. I write this book in the firm belief that parents need to be made aware of the myriad dangers as their offspring digitally migrate. We need to bridge the digital generation gap, learn about the opportunities and pitfalls, and establish boundaries in Cyberia for our kids, in the form of rules, commonsense behaviour and safe online practices.

Digital natives

American promoter of online education Marc Prensky (www.marcprensky.com) coined the term 'digital natives' to describe today's youth, who have always experienced ubiquitous access to digital media. There is a genuine cultural difference between those of us born before interactive media was so prevalent and those brought up with computers, the internet, hundreds of channels of cable TV, mobile phones, MP3 music players, game consoles and more.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that during the twelve months to April 2003, 1 693 300 young Australians aged 5–14 years accessed the internet. This included 90 per cent of 14-year-olds and 21 per cent of 5-year-olds. Sixty-one per cent of those who accessed the internet at home did so more than once a week, and 14 per cent did so every day. The percentages are sure to be higher now, as is the overall annual figure of child users.

Further, of those participating in daily internet use, 70 per cent were aged 12–14, followed by those aged 9–11 (23 per cent) and 5–8 (7 per cent). My clinical experience leaves me with no doubt that the age group most vulnerable to harassment is that of early adolescence (13–15 years), and we can see that the vast majority of this group is online daily. There are also a lot of kindergarten-aged children wandering around Cyberia.

Our kids, then, are 'digital natives', born with a mouse in their hand. Many parents aren't as comfortable with the online world. Recently, Canada's Media Awareness Network released a report called 'Young Canadians in a Wired World', based on extensive surveys and focus groups. It found that 'for most parents, the technology is a bit like “magic”, whereas young people can't imagine what the world must have been like before the technology was available'. It's also interesting that parents thought of the internet negatively and from a very narrow perspective. They said that children are wasting their time chatting and playing games. Don't kids just love to hear that?

If the internet is second nature to today's kids, when should education about online behaviour begin? Well, if British 3-year old Jack Neal is anything to go by, pretty early is the answer. The BBC News (25 September 2006) reported online that Jack used his mother's computer to buy a £9000 car on the internet auction site eBay. His parents only discovered their son's successful bid when they received a message from eBay about the soft-top second-hand Barbie-pink Nissan Figaro. Jack's mother had accidentally left her eBay password in her computer and her wired child son pressed the 'buy it now' button. They explained the mistake to the car dealer, who fortunately saw the funny side and said he would re-advertise.

The conclusion one draws from the research is that from a very young age, children will begin exploring the internet, with or without parental supervision. As they get older, they will enjoy greater independence and may be tempted to break the family's internet rules. Innocent curiosity and rebelliousness in children aren't new, but they have different ramifications in the online world.