The Digital Divide

by Mark Bauerlein

  They expect other people to have integrity, too. They do not want to work for, or buy a product from, an organization that is dishonest. They also expect companies to be considerate of their customers, employees, and the communities in which they operate. Net Geners are also more aware of their world than ever before, due to the abundance of information on the Internet.

  This astuteness of the Net Generation has big implications for companies that want to sell things to Net Geners or employ them. At a time of uncertainty, young people look for companies they can trust. They have a low tolerance for companies that lie when they’re trying to sell something, and they can find out pretty quickly if that’s the case.

  In a crowded marketplace, a company’s integrity becomes an important point of difference. Net Geners don’t like to be misled or hit with costly surprises, whether measured in money, time, quality, or function. Seventy-seven percent agreed with the statement “If a company makes untrue promises in their advertising, I’ll tell my friends not to buy their products.”17 They get angry when they feel they were wronged: “Blockbuster says no late fees. It is all a lie!” said one fifteen-year-old boy. “After a week you have to pay $1.25 and then you have to buy the movie after two weeks. They trick you!”

  Although Net Geners are quick to condemn, they are also quick to forgive if they see signs that the company is truly sorry for an error. Seventy-one percent said they would continue to do business with a company if it corrected a mistake honestly and quickly.18

  Integrity, to the Net Gener, primarily means telling the truth and living up to your commitments. Does it also mean doing good? Would Net Geners shun a company that pollutes on a massive scale or mistreats its employees? The survey data are not clear. Our research suggests that only a quarter take into account a company’s policies on social responsibility or the environment when making a big purchase. About 40 percent would abandon a product they love if they discovered that the company has suspect social practices. 19

  Yet my interviews with Net Geners suggest that significant numbers of them think about values before they buy. It’s not because they’re necessarily better human beings. It’s because they can easily find out how a product is made, and what’s in it. Knowledge leads to action. When you can scrutinize the environmental and labor practices of a company as readily as Net Geners like Niki can, you can make decisions on the basis of what that company is doing—not just what it’s saying.

  Integrity swings both ways, though. You can find plenty of Net Geners who judge companies by a very strict ethical standard, and yet they are downloading music for free—which the music industry regards as stealing. A third of iPod owners are downloading illegally, according to a study by Jupiter Research.20 My research suggests that’s an underestimation. According to nGenera research, 77 percent of Net Geners have downloaded music, software, games, or movies without paying for them.21 What’s more, 72 percent of file-sharers age eighteen to twenty-nine say they don’t care about the copyright status of the files they share, according to a Pew Internet and American Life Project.22 Most don’t view it as stealing, or if they do, they justify it in different ways. They see the music industry as a big business that deserves what it gets, or they think the idea of owning music is over. Some even think they’re doing small bands a favor.

  There’s one clear sign that Net Geners value the act of doing good: a record number of Net Geners are volunteering for civic causes. One of them even launched a magazine, aptly called Good magazine. Niki says 70 percent of her crowd is volunteering, and she’s an enthusiastic example. This winter, she helped organize a big fundraiser for Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. “We want to end the stigma against mental illness,” says Niki. Her friends have taken a big step in this direction. “A lot of my friends have anorexia or depression, and like most I’ve got mental illness in my own extended family. It’s time to take a stand. We can talk about it. It’s not swept under the carpet.”

  Integrity is driving their behavior in other institutions as well. They want their universities, schools, governments, and politicians to be honest, considerate of their interests, accountable, and open. As parents, the early evidence suggests, they want to run their families based on such values. This is such a hopeful finding—the biggest generation ever is demanding that companies and other institutions behave with integrity. What a powerful force for a better world.

  >>> collaboration

  At most companies, employees chat over coffee, in front of the fax machine, or by the water cooler. But at Best Buy, Net Gen store employees—some as young as nineteen—helped to create an entirely new kind of digital chat zone. It’s The Watercooler, a mass-communication and dialogue tool for all employees at all levels. It’s part of Best Buy’s big effort to tap the unique skills of its Net Gen employees, especially in using digital technology to get the frontline staff to contribute ideas. “The Watercooler fills a huge hole we’ve had,” said Best Buy’s senior manager of communications, Jennifer Rock. It’s “a direct line between employees in stores and all locations to talk about business topics directly with corporate leaders, teams, and with each other. In the first three months, we’ve gained 85,000 active users.”

  The Watercooler is the best place for employees to get answers to their questions about things like best practices for home theater installation, or why they do not sell Dell products in their stores. It gives the company a way to mine the knowledge and experience of the entire employee population for input on weighty business decisions. “Being that Best Buy, like most companies, has traditionally communicated at employees instead of with them, we didn’t forecast how quickly The Watercooler would become this business communication tool,” said Rock. “But our employees were obviously ready.”

  Net Geners are natural collaborators. This is the relationship generation. As much as I thought that I, as a ten-year-old, had a relationship with the fabulous teenager Annette Funicello on The Mickey Mouse Club, it wasn’t so. (She did eventually answer my letters, but today I wonder if they were really her answers.)

  They collaborate online in chat groups, play multiuser video games, use e-mail, and share files for school, work, or just for fun. They influence one another through what I call N-Fluence networks, where they discuss brands, companies, products, and services. They bring a culture of collaboration with them to work and the marketplace and are comfortable using new online tools to communicate. They like to be in touch with their friends on their BlackBerrys or cell phones wherever they are—on the street, in the store, or at work. It gives them a sense of virtual community all day long. It makes them feel like they have a friend in their pocket.

  Their eagerness to collaborate can be a bonus for companies. Net Geners want to work hand-in-hand with companies to create better goods and services, something their parents never dreamed of. Companies never thought of it either: without the Internet for a free two-way dialogue with customers, they conceived new products in secret.

  Today, Net Geners are helping companies develop advertising campaigns. In one early experiment in advertising collaboration, GM invited consumers to a newly built website that offered video clips and simple editing tools they could use to create ads for the Chevy Tahoe SUV. The site gained online fame after environmentalists hijacked the site’s tools to build and post ads on the site condemning the Tahoe as an eco-unfriendly gas guzzler. GM didn’t take the ads down, which caused even more online buzz. Some pundits said GM was being foolhardy, but the numbers proved otherwise. The website quickly attracted more than 620,000 visitors, two-thirds of whom went on to visit Chevy.com. For three weeks running, the new site funneled more people to the Chevy site than either Google or Yahoo did. Most important, sales of the Tahoe soared.23 To be sure, concern for the environment did not impede the young car enthusiasts from purchasing the Tahoe. For them, the competing norms resolved in GM’s favor.

  Many Net Geners are happy to help with product design. They believe they offer useful insights and l
ike to feel part of a knowledgeable and exclusive group. They are willing to test product prototypes and answer survey questions. Half of Net Geners are willing to tell companies the details of their lives if the result is a product that better fits their needs. This number rises to 61 percent of Early Adopters and 74 percent of the Bleeding Edge. However, they hesitate to share the data if they feel a company might misuse the information, sell it to other companies, or inundate them with junk mail and spam.24

  Now, Net Gen consumers are taking the next step and becoming producers, cocreating products and services with companies. Alvin Toffler coined the term “prosumer” in his 1970s book Future Shock.25 I called it “prosumption” a decade ago.26 I can see it happening now, as the Internet transforms itself from a platform for presenting information to a place where you can collaborate and where individuals can organize themselves into new communities. In the Web 2.0, new communities are being formed in social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, and these communities are starting to go into production. People are making things together. So prosumption was an idea waiting to happen, waiting for a generation who had a natural instinct to collaborate and co-innovate.

  Collaboration extends to other aspects of the Net Geners’ lives. At work, they want to feel that their opinion counts. While they acknowledge their lack of experience, they feel they have relevant insights—especially about technology and the Internet—and they want the opportunity to influence decisions and change work processes to make them more efficient. Making this happen requires a receptive corporate culture and the work tools, such as blogs and wikis, that encourage collaboration.

  The new collaboration is not traditional teamwork at all. The difference today is that individual efforts can be harnessed on a large scale to achieve collective outcomes, like Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written by 75,000 active volunteers and continually edited by hundreds of thousands of readers around the world who perform millions of edits per month. That would have been impossible to achieve without a new generation of collaboration tools.

  These tools make collaboration on an international scale so easy, as my daughter Niki found last year while working for an international consulting company. She’d cook up an idea for a widget that might be useful for a client, and at the end of the day she’d send a message to a team of four computer developers in the Czech Republic. The next morning, there it was: a new widget ready for her to check out. “There’s an old saying that two heads are better than one,” she says. “Well, I say that ten thousand heads are better than two. There are lots of smart people out there, and we should be using new technologies to tap into their talents.”

  Net Geners are collaborators in every part of their lives. As civic activists, they’re tapping into the collaborative characteristic with aplomb. The Net Gen wants to help. They’ll help companies make better products and services. They’re volunteering in record numbers, in part because the Internet offers so many ways, big and small, to help out.

  Educators should take note. The current model of pedagogy is teacher focused, one-way, one size fits all. It isolates the student in the learning process. Many Net Geners learn more by collaborating—both with their teacher and with each other. They’ll respond to the new model of education that’s beginning to surface—studentfocused and multiway, which is customized and collaborative.

  >>> entertainment

  In the high-tech world, where employers put a premium on attracting the brightest Net Geners they can find, some work sites look like playgrounds. You can play foosball at Microsoft’s Redmond campus—or baseball on the company diamond or soccer or volleyball. There’s even a private lake. You can take your pick of the twenty-five cafeterias on campus, along with the requisite Starbucks stands. Xbox consoles are stashed in alcoves. Nearly three thousand works of art hang on the walls. You can even go on whalewatching excursions. Over at Google, there’s a rock-climbing wall on the premises, along with a company pool, a beach volleyball pit, a gym, plus pool tables. You’ll feel like you’re right back in college. You can even bring your pet.

  These employers know that for Net Geners, work should be fun. Net Geners see no clear dividing line between the two. This may be anathema to corporate types who enjoy the grind. The old paradigm was that there was a time of day when one worked and a time of day when one relaxed and had fun. These two models have now become merged in the same activity because Net Geners believe in enjoying what they do for a living. Net Geners expect their work to be intrinsically satisfying. They expect to be emotionally fulfilled by their work. They also see nothing wrong with taking time off from work to check their profile on Facebook or play an online game. Eighty-one percent of teens play online games—and once they get jobs, they’re likely to play online games at work to blow off steam.

  Employers often growl when they see Net Geners goofing off online at work. But I think that employers should cool it. What’s wrong with spending twenty minutes playing an online game at work? Why is that any worse than what my generation did—amble downstairs for a coffee, a smoke, and a shared complaint, usually about management? Immersion in digital technology has taught this generation to switch very quickly between one line of thought and another. Switching off for a few minutes by playing a game can generate fresh ways to solve problems. It’s arguably more productive than hunkering down and spinning your wheels for hours on end.

  The Internet gives them plenty of opportunity to amuse themselves online. The Web is the fun tool of choice with which to catch up on news headlines, Google, check e-mail, and IM with friends. There’s entertainment from around the world from websites, chatting with “Net pals,” and online gaming. There’s niche entertainment that caters to their interests, such as HollywoodStockExchange .com for movie buffs, or StyleDiary.net for fashionistas. Many Net Geners maximize their interactions by engaging in multiple “netivities” simultaneously, such as chatting with friends on MSN while listening to their media player and surfing the Net. YouTube raises the bar for interactive entertainment. Users upload hundreds of thousands of videos daily, either snippets of television programs they like or content they’ve created. Users vote and comment on the submissions.

  To be sure, employers who allow Net Geners to amuse themselves online or wear headphones need proper work design and policies to maximize productivity. In some situations, listening to music on headphones at work is fine, while in other situations it might not be. Notwithstanding the Net Gen ability to multitask, it’s best to minimize distractions, including online ones, for work that requires deep thinking.

  Net Geners’ love of entertainment also has important implications for companies that want to sell things to them. Nearly three-quarters of Net Geners agreed with the following statement: “Having fun while using a product is just as important as the product doing what it is supposed to do.” Net Geners value the experience of using the product beyond its primary function. They find amusement in accessory options and playing with tactile features, particularly younger males. Net Geners become bored easily, so playing with their tech devices keeps them interested.27

  Still, making a product fun as well as useful presents a challenge to companies targeting the generation. How, for instance, do you make a mortgage fun? Well, take a look at what MtvU, the national network for college students, is doing as part of its campaign to help Darfur. On the site, the network launched an audacious game that asked players to put themselves in the shoes of a teenager in Darfur faced with a terrible decision of whether to go and get water before the bloodthirsty militia roll in. Millions of kids have played the game online—a testament to the power of the “games for change movement.”

  >>> speed

  When I began working with computers, I used a 360-bits-persecond dial-up modem to write my first book from my home office. Fifteen years later, when I wrote Growing Up Digital, the typical access rate was 9,600 bits per second. Many young people today access the Web at between 5 million bits per second and 65 million bytes per s
econd!

  Having grown up digital, they expect speed—and not just in video games. They’re used to instant response, 24/7. Video games give them instant feedback; Google answers their inquiries within nanoseconds. So they assume that everyone else in their world will respond quickly, too. Every instant message should draw an instant response. If a member of their peer group doesn’t respond instantly, they become irritated and worried. They fear it may be a negative comment on their status and a personal slight. “IM has made this worse, because if someone sees you online and you don’t answer, they know you are ignoring them,” a twenty-eight-year-old man said in our online survey.

  Net Geners also expect to receive an item they have purchased within a matter of days. They are no longer willing to wait four to six weeks to receive their secret decoder ring after sending in their cereal box tops. Corporations that are quick to respond to inquiries are praised and viewed as trustworthy, while long wait times are criticized. Needless to say, Net Geners do not like being put on hold.

  When they e-mail a company, 80 percent expect an answer back quickly. But when they talk to their friends, e-mail is too slow for this generation, too cumbersome. They prefer the speed of instant messaging. They’re impatient, and they know it. When we asked them what they thought of the following statement—“I have little patience and I can’t stand waiting for things”—56 percent agreed.28

  It makes working in the conventional office hard. “Working in a typical company can really sap one’s energy, because things happen so slowly,” said Net Gener Moritz Kettler. “A lot of my friends tell me they are frustrated with the glacial pace of decision making. There is a lack of urgency. There’s no ‘let’s get this done.’ There is a big culture clash in the workplace with my generation and the bosses, who can often be much older.”