Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Don Tapscott defines the N-generation as the computer-literate offspring
of baby boomers. By the year 2000, there will be nearly 90 million
“N-geners” in the United States and Canada alone. N-geners know how
to cybersurf as naturally as their parents knew how to dial a phone.
They do not like passive mediums like television and radio. They speak
their own language. They have their own code of ethics and social norms.
No wonder the N-generation is viewed with fear and suspicion by parents,
teachers, politicians, the police, and the media. But Tapscott thinks
that the kids are all right—it’s their parents who need help.

Tapscott has written several books about the impact of cybertechnology
on world culture. In this book, he focuses on how personal computers and
the Web have revolutionized the way children learn, communicate,
entertain themselves, and spend their money. A cybersurfer himself, the
author used the Web to research this book. Much of his text is a
compilation of input from several hundred N-geners ranging in age from 4
to 20. Tapscott also examines what business leaders, educators,
demographers, and self-proclaimed trend gurus have had to say about
computers and the people using them. A substantial index and a reference
list are included at the back of the book.

Growing Up Digital, although it is about N-geners, was written for baby
boomers. Tapscott takes pains to offer clarity and comfort to a
threatened generation that automatically thinks every Mac starts with
two all-beef patties and that a Windows application is something you get
from squeegee kids. The content is first-rate, but the book’s
designers should have thought a little harder about the average baby
boomer’s fading eyesight when they selected the diminutive font and
grey ink. Growing Up Digital is nevertheless a fine read, even through
bifocals.