What if our kids look for something new?

Why would our kids want more of the same thing?

Imagine being a 14 to 17 year old today. You are of the so-called Internet generation. You have never known anything else. A digital camera is a camera (are there other camera's?). Internet is like electricity: always there. Schoolwork is done on the Web (if you can't Google it, it doesn't exist: my son needed information on the 1953 flouding disaster and was surprised that he couldn't find much on Google ...).

So I say: it's about time they change their ways. They are doing what we are doing, that's pretty uncool. Having parents on iTunes buying the latest songs: how mainstream is that? I remember a discussion I once had a couple of years ago where I predicted the end of the Messenger era (then really exploding), not because of the advent of new and better communication technologies but because ... it would have become old-fashioned, something that had always been around. Not cool at all.


My own son has kicked off his laptop a couple of weeks ago. Before that, he had already stopped MSN ages ago, was no longer interested in Netlog. All 'more of the same'. Games, yes. A renewed interest in PS. Watching stupid programs on tv but also the occasional National Geographic channel.

He hates touchscreens by the way: he's definitely not the only one. When Gartner predicts most kids wil be using touchscreen pc's by 2015, that's a grown-up's point of view. They will have to. There won't be any other choice (unless they collectively decline to buy)

Our other son wants to buy a record player. Records are cool.

Imagine them rediscovering books. Real ones. Newspapers when they are older. Using the Web for what they have learned it to be: a tool in your daily life. Not a must-always-be-on kinda thing that we are all so crazy about just because we still know what it used to be like before. When no-one had mobiles. When pc's @ home were a far away ambition, let alone having laptops.

So what if our kids look for something new? It might very well be something old.