or Screenagers, as Richard Watson calls them in his 2010 book "Future Minds", have characteristics that interestingly remind me of myself - having passed that age bracket et for over ten years now, but getting more and more drawn into the comfort of the too user friendly digital and mobile devices. The below are some of the traits describing screenagers (Watson, 2010) or more generally people for sense of practical things?
- They prefer multi-tasking, parallel processing and personalized experiences and prefer images over words
- Memory is something found on a hard drive - If you need information you can google it
- They frequently use digital devices to avoid confrontation and commitment
- Virtualization is removing the necessity of direct human contacts
- The “reset generation” thinks that if something goes wrong, they can always press a button and start again
- The digital generation demands sensory-laden environments, instant response and frequent praise and reward
- Screenagers live in the now and everything is just great, but they are less numerate and literate than their forebears
- They are alert to multiple streams of information, although attention and understanding tend to be shallow
- Their brain is agile but ignorant of wider context and culture
For me, most of the above is more alarming than nice-to-have. I feel the need of some old school paper-and-pen driven exercises.