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My psychoanalyst mother recently instructed me to fix a faulty Internet connection on her newly purchased iMac desktop computer. I glanced at it, and with a smile informed her, “You haven't plugged in the modem,” to which she replied defiantly, “It's totally wireless!” Under the impression the world had transformed into a Jetsons cartoon while she was asleep, my baby-boomer mother had purchased a seemingly magical device in order to keep up with her Digital Generation child, only to realize she had no idea how to use it. This predicament is indicative of the cultural and psychological disparity experienced by parents and children in the Digital Age, a time when children's unsurpassed access to new information, people, and ideas challenges our cultural ideal of childhood innocence and confounds traditional distinctions between generations. Politicians and news media often exploit public concern over children's mounting media consumption, charging film, music, television, and now the Internet with indecency on behalf of enraged parents. Recognizing children's rising purchasing power, marketers create campaigns to cultivate consumer loyalty at a shockingly young age. While these precedents portray children as victims of media's corrupting forces, “digital kids” have also appropriated cyberspace as a home within their homes, where they can seek out their own communities, interact with adults as equals, and nurture their budding voices.
Kathryn C. Montgomery's book, Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet, guides the reader through the murky waters of the Internet's past, pointing out the historical movements toward youth marketing and media deregulation that shaped the emerging medium and an equally malleable generation of children. In doing so, she reflects on her time as Director of the Center for Media Education (CME), a public interest advocacy group that she and her husband founded to influence media policy affecting children