Excellent post! I had seen the report in the newspaper, and thought it was interesting, though not surprising, that teens spend less time on the internet than adults. Being a Gen-X’er myself, and thinking about the ways in which I use the internet on a regular basis, almost none of my uses (reading news, shopping, paying bills, getting maps, checking the weather, looking up information related to running a household) would overlap with those of a teen. The only exception is social networking, but even then I suspect this function is largely carried out by cell phone amongst teenagers.

I think Dan makes an interesting conclusion. Youth of any era have the essential qualities of an investigative spirit, and boundless energy (even the “lazy” Gen-X’ers!) and the tendency to question the status quo. How these are applied in the cultural and technological context of the times is what distinguishes one “generation” from the next. Having a 9-year old child, I’m very curious to see how her cohort will be labelled. The “Webkidz” generation, perhaps?

There’s an interesting divide in the N-Gen that might illuminate this subject further. By definition I am one of oldest Net-Geners, but I absolutely did not grow up digital. My first real contact with the Internet was in university. In my first “real” job (investment analyst) I was the “Internet research expert”, but that was mainly because none of us had ever used the Internet before, and since I was new they tossed me in there… and it goes on from there.

So I “grew up” with the Internet in my 20s… while those seven years (or so) my junior “grew up” with the Internet in their teens. I imagine the experiences are quite different.

Now I don’t feel so bad being a Net-Gen luddite, although I am with Denis in that I’m on leading edge of the Net-Gen, so didn’t grow up digital until my 20’s.

Good call on the life stages approach Dan. If you use that lens, it makes sense that Gen-Xers are leading the charge in terms of productive uses of the Internet. Simply put, they have no choice – hey have to use the tools in order to remain competitive in their work environments. Net-Geners will get there too, but for now they have the luxury to just Facebook, MySpace, and Torrent their way through life.

[...] in short supply – the real talent crunch. What’s more, as Dan points out in his recent post “A digital generation?,” Gen Xers have mastered productive uses of the Internet to a much higher degree than the [...]

Very interesting discussion here, but I just wanted to point out that the first statistic presented (about the time each generation spends on the internet) is a bit flawed.

Most adults that work desk jobs are on the internet all day, whether it be for their work or their entertainment (haven’t we all seen this?). 12 to 17 year olds are at school all day with very limited time that they can spend on the internet. Of course their stat comes out much lower than that of the adults. I think that in terms of free time, N-Geners would come out ahead, but that’s only speculation.

Other than that, good thoughts in the article.

I have a slight problem with the comment
“12 to 17 year olds spend, on average, only 13 hours per week on the Internet (compared to a weekly average of 19 hours for online adults)”
Well isn’t it obvious that those 13 hours are made up throughout the week but not during school?
where as an adult is most likely making up that 19 hours at the office throughout the week and most likely doesn’t want to see a computer when they get home!

The question is, would those numbers change if genX had access to the internet all day every day like most office employees?

[...] pieces about the topic of different generational uses of networking on the Wikinomics blog – ”A Digital Generation“ and ”GenX and the Real Talent Crunch“. The bit that was most intriguing was [...]

Amazing.

The sad truth is the digital revolution started in the 1970s and by the mid-80s lots of young kids had computers. The only thing they lacked was the network. In the 90s we had BBS systems that sufficed as crude social environments.

Now the kids of the late 70s and 80s are pushing the boundaries of the internet and few realize it is them not the children of the 90s that are the leaders. Certainly the 90s and 00s children are exposed to it more, but they are more like the people who today use telephones vs. the Mr. Bell.

[...] those that don’t know Ted Rall’s comics, he’s from the Jeff Gordiner world that Dan Herman wrote about a month back. Jeff’s book is called “X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft [...]

I love that analogy, Indigo, and I (as my post might indicate) agree with you wholeheartedly. Mr. Bell meets Herman Hollerith…

Also, as a couple of you have pointed out, there are issues with the methadology behind these results (school vs. work access) that skews it in a particular manner. That said, what would be interesting and statistically enlightening would be to compare the older edge of the N-Gen (working age) vs their GenX brethren to see how these digital natives adapt their usage in the working world, and how it differs from previous generations.

[...] pieces about the topic of different generational uses of networking on the Wikinomics blog – “A Digital Generation” and “GenX and the Real Talent Crunch“. The bit that was most intriguing was [...]

[...] speaks to the some of the� discussions we’ve been having here at New Paradigm and affirms that there’s a lot more to this [...]

[...] Dan Gordinier’s book “X Saves the World.” We’ve mentioned it a couple of times on the blog (here and here), so as I set it down I thought, ‘well this was a pretty darn good book; maybe I should [...]

[...] pieces about the topic of different generational uses of networking on the Wikinomics blog – ”A Digital Generation“ and ”GenX and the Real Talent Crunch“. The bit that was most intriguing was [...]

[...] Gordinier, author of X Saves the World, which we’ve mentioned on the blog before, a couple of times, has an interesting way of testing whether one is, in fact, a member of the generation. He [...]