Debunking the Net Generation

A lot of reports and articles -- including many on this site (here and here) and on Government Executive (here and here) -- depict younger workers and the Internet as joined at the hip. The 'Net and the social networking it spawned, the story goes, are indispensable to the so-called Net Generation (those between the ages of 17 and 31). They demand to have the tools at the ready at home, at play and at work, sociologists say.

But a study recently released by the Hans Bredow Institute in Germany questions that characterization. In fact, it debunks it. According to an article about the study posted on Spiegel Online International, the image of "tech-savvy youth who are mobile, networked, and chronically restless, spoilt by the glut of stimuli on the Internet, . . . [who] live in perpetual symbiosis with their computers and mobile phones, with networking technology practically imprinted in their genes" is false.

They're more like 17-year-old Jetlir. While he is online just about every day and likes to watch YouTube, he doesn't avail himself to everything Web 2.0, prefers to meet up with friends in person and play his favorite sport, basketball. In his own words:

"My [basketball] club comes first. I'd never miss a training session. If someone wants to meet me, I turn off my computer immediately."

In Spiegel's words:

Jetlir is content if his friends are within reach, and if people keep uploading videos to YouTube. He'd never dream of keeping a blog. Nor does he know anybody else his age who would want to. And he's certainly never tweeted before. "What's the point?" he asks.

The Internet plays a paradoxical role in Jetlir's life. Although he uses it intensively, he isn't that interested in it. It's indispensable, but only if he has nothing else planned. "It isn't everything," he says.

Spiegel raps Marc Prensky and Don Tapscott for their portrayal of the Net Generation saying,

these would-be visionaries base their arguments on impressive individual cases of young Internet virtuosos. As other, more serious researchers have since discovered, such exceptions say very little about the generation as a whole, and they are now avidly trying to correct the mistakes of the past.