iGeneration: Raising Socially Wired Children

Young kids are becoming more wired than their parents and Millenials because of their exposure to the web and cell phones: social tools are shaping their minds and our culture faster all the time.

- Sharon Jayson, Tech-savvy ‘iGeneration’ kids multi-task, connect
Move over, Millennials. You’re not the younger generation anymore.

For the past decade, you were the ones to watch. But now, as the eldest among you are fast approaching 30, there’s a new group just begging for some attention. They’re still kids, and although there’s a lot the experts don’t yet know about them, one thing they do agree on is that what kids use and expect from their world has changed rapidly.

And it’s all because of technology.

“It’s simply a part of their DNA,” says Dave Verhaagen, a child and adolescent psychologist in Charlotte. “It shapes everything about them.”

To the psychologists, sociologists, and generational and media experts who study them, their digital gear sets this new group (yet unnamed by any powers that be) apart, even from their tech-savvy Millennial elders. They want to be constantly connected and available in a way even their older siblings don’t quite get. These differences may appear slight, but they signal an all-encompassing sensibility that some say marks the dawning of a new generation.

“The current generation seems to be moving well into adulthood, and there seems to be another generation setting itself up as a contrast to it,” says Neil Howe, a historian and demographer who has co-written several books on the generations.

Kathryn Montgomery, a communication professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and author of the 2007 book Generation Digital, hears similar stories from her students. “They tell me their younger siblings have different relationships with these technologies,” she says.

The difference is that these younger kids “don’t remember a time without the constant connectivity to the world that these technologies bring,” she says. “They’re growing up with expectations of always being present in a social way — always being available to peers wherever you are.”

The contrast between Millennials and this younger group was so evident to psychologist Larry Rosen of California State University-Dominguez Hills that he has declared the birth of a new generation in a new book, Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn, out next month. Rosen says the tech-dominated life experience of those born since the early 1990s is so different from the Millennials he wrote about in his 2007 book, Me, MySpace and I: Parenting the Net Generation, that they warrant the distinction of a new generation, which he has dubbed the “iGeneration.”

“The technology is the easiest way to see it, but it’s also a mind-set, and the mind-set goes with the little ‘i,’ which I’m taking to stand for ‘individualized,’ ” Rosen says. “Everything is customized and individualized to ‘me.’ My music choices are customizable to ‘me.’ What I watch on TV any instant is customizable to ‘me.’ “

He says the iGeneration includes today’s teens and middle-schoolers, but it’s too soon to tell about elementary-school ages and younger.

Wendy Nokes, a seventh-grader in Winchester, Va., got a cellphone last year when she was 12 and is always in touch with friends. “I have it 24/7,” Wendy says. “Sometimes I have to be: ‘I’m going to sleep now. Stop texting me.’ “

Rosen identifies 13 distinct iGeneration traits, including:

• Early introduction to technology.
• Adeptness at multitasking.
• Desire for immediacy.
• Ability to use technology to create a vast array of “content.”

It appears that the motivation for this article was a recent PewInternet.org report by Amanda Lenhart, Kristen Purcell, Aaron Smith, and Kathryn Zickuhr. An excerpt:

Social Media and Young Adults

Both teen and adult use of social networking sites has risen significantly, yet there are shifts and some drops in the proportion of teens using several social networking site features.

• 73% of wired American teens now use social networking websites, a significant increase from previous surveys. Just over half of online teens (55%) used social networking sites in November 2006 and 65% did so in February 2008. [emphasis mine.]
  
• As the teen social networking population has increased, the popularity of some sites’ features has shifted. Compared with SNS activity in February 2008, a smaller proportion of teens in mid-2009 were sending daily messages to friends via SNS, or sending bulletins, group messages or private messages on the sites.   
• 47% of online adults use social networking sites, up from 37% in November 2008.
• Young adults act much like teens in their tendency to use these sites. Fully 72% of online 18-29 year olds use social networking websites, nearly identical to the rate among teens, and significantly higher than the 40% of internet users ages 30 and up who use these sites.
• Adults are increasingly fragmenting their social networking experience as a majority of those who use social networking sites – 52% – say they have two or more different profiles. That is up from 42% who had multiple profiles in May 2008. [emphasis mine.]
• Facebook is currently the most commonly-used online social network among adults. Among adult profile owners 73% have a profile on Facebook, 48% have a profile on MySpace and 14% have a LinkedIn profile.
• The specific sites on which young adults maintain their profiles are different from those used by older adults: Young profile owners are much more likely to maintain a profile on MySpace (66% of young profile owners do so, compared with just 36% of those thirty and older) but less likely to have a profile on the professionally-oriented LinkedIn (7% vs. 19%). In contrast, adult profile owners under thirty and those thirty and older are equally likely to maintain a profile on Facebook (71% of young profile owners do so, compared with 75% of older profile owners).

Teens are not using Twitter in large numbers. While teens are bigger users of almost all other online applications, Twitter is an exception.

• 8% of internet users ages 12-17 use Twitter. This makes Twitter as common among teens as visiting a virtual world, and far less common than sending or receiving text messages as 66% of teens do, or going online for news and political information, done by 62% of online teens.
• Older teens are more likely to use Twitter than their younger counterparts; 10% of online teens ages 14-17 do so, compared with 5% of those ages 12-13.
• High school age girls are particularly likely to use Twitter. Thirteen percent of online girls ages 14-17 use Twitter, compared with 7% of boys that age.
• Using different wording, we find that 19% of adult internet users use Twitter or similar services to post short status updates and view the updates of others online.
• Young adults lead the way when it comes to using Twitter or status updating. One-third of online 18-29 year olds post or read status updates.

Teens have access to a wider variety of tools to get online to be connected to others: 27% of teens 12-17 use their cell phones to go online, which is much higher than in the past, and which can be done almost anywhere.

These kids are going to be the first group that have been wired mobilely since childhood. I am very interested in their multitasking abilities and approaches, and I hope I can dig up more research on that. And I don’t mean the fear-mongers who claim we are raising the dumbest kids ever.

I also would like to understand more about their perceptions of friendship and social relationships, since they particiapte in social networks like MySpace and Facebook, even at age 12 and younger.