By: Arthur Cooper
Submitted: 2010-10-19 15:53:00 | Word Count: 664
So, how old were you when you made your digital debut? A new study by AVG Technologies found that 92 percent of today’s kids have some kind of online record. Additionally, 23 percent make their online debut before birth, with moms posting sonogram images. My cousin even started a blog from her baby’s perspective 3 months into her pregnancy.
Adults today have a digital record that goes back 15 years at the most. So what effect will this digitally saturated age have on the newest generation? 20 years from now, an employer could search that name and find everything from ultrasound images to how their high school football team placed because of a great play they made. Such is a life lived online thanks to programs like Facebook and Twitter.
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Kids are already more tech-savvy than their older counterparts. They’ve never known life without a smart phone, let alone its predecessor the cell phone, or God forbid a cordless land line phone. They even know how to play games and watch videos on it without assistance. If the child is old enough to read, it wouldn’t surprise me if they could fully operate the phone, sending text messages and placing calls with no problem.
Younger and younger kids are also figuring out how to use a computer without assistance. I once witnessed a 2-year-old turn on a computer – I almost said boot up a computer, a term today’s youth wouldn’t recognize – and start playing a game without any help at all.
I wonder if this generation will learn to read at a younger age as a result of this technology overload. Nearly everything on the internet and even cell phones has some kind of text associated with it. With toddlers and young kids being more adept at using this technology, will they learn to recognize words and phrases at a younger age? On the other hand, what would those phrases be? Running l8, or U coming over 2nite?
Clearly the world has embraced the online age in a big way, but is it squeezing too hard?
