Today’s youth are sponges: soaking up the world around them that in itself is saturated in innovative technologies, is hypnotized by television, and is caught up by the World Wide Web. Most argue that it is obvious to see how the “Net-Generation” is benefiting from their fast-paced lives brought about by the fast-paced technologies that run them.

Don Tapscott claims in his article “The Net Generation and the School”, that a “communications revolution is shaping a generation” and he is very correct. But, how well is this generation being shaped? The Internet and communication in general is no longer about necessity, because for young people from elementary school to college it’s become a leisure activity, school work must-have, and entertainment center.

One of the first arguments made about the Net-Generation is that through growing up with the Internet they are becoming better critical thinkers and more digitally literate. However, the critical thinking skills of young people may be growing in one arena, but they are failing in another. In addition, as this generation learns how to “navigate” through information on the web and weave together images, text, and sound with ease, they might also lose the ability to figure things out for themselves.

“Because of the availability of visual media, their text literacy may be less well developed than previous cohorts,” explains Diana and James Oblinger in their book Educating the Net Generation. The Internet gives a student everything and provides almost every tool necessary to learn so the student does not have to do very much mind work. Critical thinking implies effort on the student’s part, but if everything is given to them then they no longer have to think critically to find the answers they are looking for.

Today’s youth are forced to make critical decisions because they are bombarded with false information and “they are increasingly exposed to the informal education of popular opinion, of advertising, of merchandising, and of the entertainment industry” (Barber, 285). As for digital literacy, which is important since the world is increasingly becoming dependent on digital technology, the Oblingers state that the Net-Generation is “comfortable using technology[but] their understanding of the technology or source quality may be shallow the Web does not meet all their information needs.”

As young people in a digital age become critical thinkers, who can multi-process vast amounts of information and do several things simultaneously, they possibly lose the ability to focus, be patient, and concentrate. They begin to expect everything to be fast and for people to get to the point. Conversations have been reduced to quick and brief instant messages and the Net-Generations need for speed is ever increasing. Everything must be small, quick, and wired for it to be useful.

Another argument that individuals who support and value the Net-Generation is that the Internet and other communication devices are helping them stay connected. This generation is the most networked and relies the most on cell phones and the Internet to stay in touch with other people. The ideas of actually calling someone’s land-line, if they even have one or talking to a person face to face are slowly disappearing.

One can bypass the process of looking someone in the eye and engaging in one on one conversation with the click of a mouse. Young people will stay connected with friends in different states, who they might not have ever met, but have no idea who the kid down the street is. The Net-Generation may be connected and well informed on a global scale, but when it comes to knowing what is going on in their own communities and neighborhoods, they draw blanks.

The Oblingers explain that this generation while “highly mobile, moving from work to classes to recreational activities, the Net Gen is always connected; always on” (Is it Age or IT, 3). Whether or not this is a good thing is still up for debate. However, technologies such as internet-ready cell phones and miniature laptops are creating a whole generation that is always connected to something rather than someone. They close themselves off and lock themselves into their own little words of digital reality by plugging into I-Pods with video and BlackBerry cell phones with Internet.

The world has always been a connected place and communication is vital, but it is important to monitor how connected a generation becomes to objects and how disconnected they become from themselves and others.

That leads into another observation that is apparent in the Net-Generation- disconnection. This generation is increasingly becoming disconnected from the things that matter. Family time has been replaced with television shows that never cease to end thanks to cable and reading a book has been replaced with reading a summary of it off a web page. The Net-Generation wants the bridged version of everything and that desire is leaking over into their social lives, family lives, and personal lives.

According to Don Tapscott, the Internet has even replaced the television because it is “unidirectional, with the choice of programming and content resting in the hands of the few.” This generation wants the choices to be in their hands and they want control of what they learn. Understandable, but where do we draw the line in how much control they can have?

Teachers will soon be obsolete because students will be able to access everything they need to learn online and discuss the material with their peers instead. “Learning is based on motivation,” state the Oblingers, “and without teachers that motivation will cease to exist” (Is It Age of IT, 2). Young people hardly want to learn and study with a teacher in the room, so trusting them to do the work without guidance and motivation would be educational suicide. It’s enough that most young people today hardly know how to spell thanks to spell check. They can’t do basic math problems because they have relied on calculators all their lives and no one ever picks up a thesaurus or dictionary these days.

Benjamin R. Barber explains in his article “Educated Student: Global Citizen or Global Consumer?” that, “today it is a world whose messages come at our young people from those ubiquitous screens that define modern society and have little to do with anything that you teach” (Barber, 285). The Internet is taking over the basic skills our parents and grandparents have mastered. What would we do if electricity suddenly stopped, batteries no longer worked, and all our computers exploded?

Furthermore, students are becoming disconnected from one another because they rely too much on technology for communication. They would rather send an e-mail than approach someone in person. Fear of communicating with another individual off line and face-to-face is being bred in the Net-Generation.

The Oblingers also point out in their book that, “a major part of school is building social skills. If we were to always communicate through technology and not in person, then the way we would view life would change dramatically.” This generation can have multiple conversations at once with different friends through instant messaging on-line, while sending an e mail to their professor, and talking on the cell phone.

Soon there will be no need to communicate outside of an instant message box or walk down the street and introduce yourself to your neighbor. No one will really know anyone else; they will simply know the information on another’s profile and his or her screen name.

The Net-Generation blindly trusts the web and is very open to sharing. According to studies done by Amanda Lenhart, a research specialist for The Internet and American Life Project, “The Net-Generation displays a striking openness to diversity, differences, and sharing; they are at ease meeting strangers on the Net.” However, this openness and desire to share can pose a threat to young people who do not understand the dangers of the Internet.

If they take the Net at face value, using it to benefit themselves and temporary satisfy their need for entertainment, they fail to see the potential risks of being too friendly with strangers. The same principle of not talking to strangers that is learned as a child is disregarded on the Net because young people believe they understand it. “Many of their exchanges on the internet are emotionally open, sharing very personal information about themselves,” say the Oblingers, there is a “mechanism of inclusiveness that does not necessarily involve personally knowing someone admitted to their group.”

The problem with this is that students give out too much information about themselves to other people and websites on the net, something they would never do to a stranger standing on a corner. The Internet is a world all by itself and the people within it need to be treated the same way they would be treated if they were walking down the street. The Internet is not a safe place, there are evil people who pretend to be people they are not, and identity theft is real.

Tapscott writes that in the primitive state that the Net is in right now, it is “painfully slow, limited, lacking complete security, reliability, [and] ubiquity.” Instead of having so many classes geared toward learning how to use the Internet, there should to be more classes about understanding and avoiding problems while surfing the Net.

“According to Teenage Research Unlimited,” states Tapscott, “the percentage of teens saying that it is “in” to be online has jumped from 50 percent in 1994 to 74 percent in 1996 to 88 percent in 1997.” One can only assume by the upward trend that in the year 2006 the popularity of being online has reached 100 percent. Using the Internet for communication and entertainment purposes may be popular right now, but how practical is it? How beneficial is relying on the Internet to communicate in the long run?

Tapscott writes that this generation has “new powerful tool for inquiry, analysis, self-expression, influence, and play,” but with these tools comes “unprecedented mobility.” Many students, and most all college students, can roam the Internet freely and view anything they want by simply typing a word into a search engine. This free range of motion allows little to be monitored, permitting young people to get into whatever they want. And if what they want is blocked, they find a way to access it.

“The Internet doesn’t stop at national boundaries; it’s a worldwide phenomenon” and students know and take advantage of the power it gives them (Barber, 290). This is the way of the Net-Generation: young people who want to question, argue, disagree, challenge, take over, and work around the world that encompasses them, even if that means their attitudes and personalities will change.

The Internet is dramatically changing the world around us, whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is still unknown. Cell phones really might cause brain tumors, carpal tunnel might become a national epidemic, and computer screens might completely destroy our eyesight overtime. Nevertheless, the Internet has definitely helped make life a lot easier and convenient. “Only through communication can life hold meaning” (Freire, 11) and there is no evidence stating that the new technologies that have been invented in the past twenty years haven’t greatly benefited society.

The world is getting smaller as a result of global communication and easy access to information, and that may be a good thing, but we have to look at the influence the Internet will have in the long run. The Net-Generation is the next generation that will be running this country and the same qualities and characteristics that they poses today, will be the same ones they use to govern the country tomorrow. Those things need to be taken into consideration when deciding how wonderful the Internet is and how beneficial it is to a person as a whole.

Works Cited

Barber, Benjamin R. “The Educated Student: Global Citizen or Global Consumer?” Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing. Ed. Gary Colombo, Robert

Cullen, Bonnie Lisle. Bedford/ St. Martin’s: Boston and New York. Sixth Ed. Chapter 2, Page 283. 2004

Brown, John Seely. “Growing up Digital: How the Web Changes Work, Education, and the Ways People Learn”. Education at a Distance: USDLA Journal. Vol. 16 No. 2. Originally published in Change, “Growing Up Digital”, March/April 2000, pp 10-20.
Reprinted with the author’s permission and that of The Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation. Published by Heldref Publications, 1319 18th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036-1802. Copyright 2000. Visited March 30, 2006. http://www.usdla.org/html/journal/FEB02_Issue/article01.html

Freire, Paulo. From Pedagogy of the Oppressed. African Diaspora and the World: Center for Journey. United States and America: Copley Custom Textbooks and Spelman College, 2005. Pages 6-19.

Lenhart, Amanda; Lee Rainie; Oliver Lewis. “Teenage Life Online: The Rise of the Instant-Message Generation and the Internet’s Impact on Friendships and Family Relationships”. Internet and American Life Project. June 20, 2001. Washington DC. Visited April 1, 2006. http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Teens_Report.pdf

Tapscott, Don. “The Net Generation and the School.” Milken Family Foundation. Updated November 9, 2004. Visited March 2006.
http://www.mff.org/edtech/article.taf?_function=detail&Content_uid1=109

Oblinger, Diana G., James L. Oblinger, Editors. Educating the Net Generation. Educause E-Book:
http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?PAGE_ID=5989&bhcp=1 2005 Visited March 2006.