Where do the Children Play?
Myths surrounding the symbiosis of youth and computers
One of the grandest myths associated with the Internet is that it is being spurred on by youth -- more precisely, by teenagers and children. We often see and hear about kids barely in their teens, showing off their computer skills and solving problems or initiating solutions that have adults stumped. There are also plenty of stories of child hackers, who have succeeded in circumventing the great military and scientific minds that could be brought against them.
I know we've come a long way
Cat Stevens Where do the Children Play? Tea for the Tillerman, 1971
we're changing day to day
but tell me,
where do the children play?
It can't be denied that there are indeed cases of outstanding youngsters using computers. However, this all comes against a backdrop of a general trend in where children have featured prominently in all aspects of social life -- primarily sports and the entertainment industry. It is a process that has been going on for several years now, in where children are increasingly being pressured into adult roles. Not surprisingly, neo-liberalism's social outlook, as in the case of the music industry, not to mention most of the advertising, is specifically targeted at children.
For this reason, a myth surrounding the symbiosis of youth and computers has evolved with the advance of digital technology. A central part to this myth is that the Internet is really a "young people's revolution". It's made to look that everyone under the age of 30 -- indeed, under the age of 18, even 13 -- are masters of the new media. "We have all these young people, generations now of young people who have just been brought up in this stuff or soaked in it, who make me look silly in terms of their knowledge, of how to operate on the web," runs the typical rant.1
Don Tapscott, a writer who runs a Canadian think-tank, Alliance for Converging Technologies, is one of the primary apologists for this myth of children as the driving force behind the Internet. His book, "Growing Up Digital: the Rise of the Net Generation" is dedicated solely to this theme. As Steve Cisler aptly noted, the book "was written as if to help the reader (and marketers) really understand the networked kids of the late 90's...and to sell to them."2
The importance of the myth behind the symbiotic relationship of children and computer technology is that not only is it self-justifying, in that it creates the conditions upon which it is based, but it's being forged into a universal axiom to the extent of fabricating reality. A case in point is the article by Stephen Glass entitled "Washington Scene: Hack Heaven", which is about a 15 year old kid and how he is able to command a big-time software firm because of his hacking skills.3Nettime::www.nettime.org4 The New Republic originally published the article in its May 18, 1998 issue, but quickly removed it from its website when it had learned that the author had fabricated it.
Hence, despite the fact that children have become prominent in all aspects of social life, there appears to be a desperate need to highlight the fact that the "digital age" is one of teenage and pre-teen youth. There are several aspects as to why this myth needs to be not only sustained, but stretched to the point of forging into reality. The primary aspect, it should come as no surprise, is economic.
Children have become an increasingly important consumer segment for big business. According to a report issued by Jupiter Communications, [4] in the US alone children are expected to spend 1.3 billion USD online by the year 2002. Teenagers will account for 1.2 billion USD of the total spending in this sector, with children under the age of 13 generating 100 million USD in sales. The study estimates that 67 percent of US teenagers with Internet access have already shopped or purchased online, while 37 percent of online kids have done so.
Another, more recent, study puts these figures much higher. According to Harris Interactive and Nickelodeon Online5, kids who are online now spend up to 164 billion USD per year. They also found that ecommerce spending among 18 to 24 year olds is now at 13 percent of their total expenditure. What is more, 63 percent of online 13 to 24 year olds state they will spend more over the Internet in the future.
Added to all this is the amount of time children spend online which, from an advertising perspective, is important. While parents believe that their children typically spend 4.2 hours per week online, a survey conducted by NFO Interactive puts the actual weekly surfing time at between five and seven hours. Some go even higher, estimating that "young adults" spend an average of 10 hours online per week, 3 hours more than adults.
Not only are young people a significant consumer group which spends a considerable amount of time online, Teenagers and children also constitute one of the fastest growing Internet populations. According to Jupiter Communications, in 1998 there were 8.6 million children and 8.4 million teenagers with Internet access in the US. By 2002 this number is expected to increase rapidly, with the number of children online expected to surge to 21.9 million, while the number of teenagers online will increase to 16.6 million. More optimistic projections put this number even higher. NUA surveys6, for instance, estimates that 77 million children and teenagers will be online globally by 2005.
Whichever set of statistics you look at, they all converge on one point, and that is the number of children users, i.e., those under the age of 13, will show the biggest increase. This rapid growth of children users is significant, in that it runs in conjunction with the increasing focus of advertisers to target younger children as potential consumers. Indeed, the very survival of e-commerce may depend on it. Accordingly, they constitute the most important user population, with their adoption of the Internet essential to ensuring its future. "Everyone who plans to do business online would be well advised to get to know Generation Y," admonishes one e-commerce advocate.7
The problem with this is not only are children basically looked upon as consumers in training, but the inexperienced behaviour of this new "consumer group", as one not mature enough to exercise restraint, is being exploited. Some reject these assertions, noting that the media habits of children, along with their actually use of the web, don't substantiate these claims. In fact, some go as far as to claim that children are somewhat better than adults when it comes to making informed choices:
"As expected, the idea also surfaces that young people raised on MTV may be better than the rest of us at filtering and processing huge amounts of information from different sources. In fact, a bank executive is quoted as saying we had better feed this insatiable capacity or else we will 'stifle' these go-getters. He considers their new capacities a 'real sea change'."8
Along these lines, it's surmised that the influence of the Internet on children is not as high as it seems. As if to back this up, the NFO report reveals that the majority of children continue to spend most of their time watching television (42 percent) and talking with friends on the phone (15 percent ), with surfing the web coming in at a shaky third (10 percent) along with listening to the radio, this only slightly more than those that spend most of their time reading books (9 percent).
Meanwhile, e-commerce pundits argue that the use of the web by children is not exploitative. According to NFO Interactive, 73 percent use the web to help with homework or school projects, 70 percent use it to play games, 30 percent to access sports news, 26 percent to research movies, 25 percent to access information on TV shows, while 22 percent to online to access news and current events. In addition to this, research has apparently shown that, contrary to conventional wisdom, young consumers are not obsessed with graphics or MPEG's rather, they cite fast downloading time as the most important feature on a site.
Yet children's usage patterns tell only part of the story. The fact that young people consider fast downloading time as the most important feature on a site as opposed to graphics is important for e-commerce advocates, for this fits well with their view of the Internet as a delivery mechanism for obtaining goods and services, as opposed to a network of information and resources.
Moreover, regardless of their specific usage patterns, children have still been conditioned to buy online. The survey conducted by NFO Interactive admits that children are ready to buy online, with 52 percent of children in the US having asked their parents to purchase products that they have seen while surfing the web. The study also calculated that one in six children have permission to purchase online, while one in seven children have actually made such a purchase.
Not surprisingly, music products as well as other entertainment products such as games, tickets, and videos are the most popular products with young consumers. "While this is largely in keeping with the purchasing patterns of older online consumers," writes Bernadette Burke, "young consumers with much less disposable income take greater risks and invest much more heavily in their individual online purchases."9
It is precisely this kind of consumer behaviour which is of great value to big business. As Martha Stewart rejoiced in a December 1998 Newsweek essay: "The Web gives us younger, more affluent buyers." The affluence alluded to here is, arguably, a delusion.
In addition to simply buying and selling, the importance of children on the Internet is that it justifies the commercial vision of the Internet as shared by e-commerce enthusiasts. In Britain, a study by NOP Research found that Internet users are held in high esteem by teenagers and children, regardless of whether they themselves have access. Internet users were described as 'clever', 'friendly', 'cool', 'trendy' and 'rich' by both users and non-users alike.
"The Internet [...] has already taken a firm hold of the subconscious of the next generation," observes Burke. "Internet users are on the cutting edge." This contrasts sharply with the adult view of the Internet, which is increasingly averse toward the image of the super-young who are also super-rich. Even so, many adults still uncritically glorify the magic of "market forces". This is because much of our cultural conditioning responds powerfully to the riches made by teenage entrepreneurs and the hot Internet investment market that has spread the wealth to anyone who could afford a piece of the action.10
In conjunction with accepting the socio-economic aspect of the Internet as promulgated by e-commerce pundits, forging the myth behind the "digital generation" also helps to reinforce a new framework for labour, one that supports greater employment insecurity and downward pressures on wages. In a way, children are being raised by machines so that when they grow up they will end up acting like machines. One can look to the examples of the industrial revolution and the use of child labour, and compare how the process is relatively similar within the so-called "information revolution".
Even more important than this, the focus on the "digital generation" is not so much to have children begin work once they reach their teens, but is valued more for preparing them to accept the structural framework behind the "new" or "digital" economy. Within this framework, young people are to be used as cheap and docile labour for the most exploitative forms of employment. Already, we can see this happening within the computer science field.
As programmers grow older, their job security plummets. In fact, they are no longer valued, for older employees are more expensive and less harder to control and/or manipulate. This is because older workers are more likely to have families, hence their benefits cost more and they are less likely to tolerate 80-hour work weeks which keep them away from their families, unlike recent college graduates who have no such worries. Thus, younger workers generally end up more willing to work longer hours for less money, displacing those with more experience.
Finally, in addition to obvious economic and social aspects, there is a tacit political aspect to placing children within the straitjacket of the "digital generation". As one observer put it simply: "MTV and does a great job in selling pop culture and making these kids less and less capable of doing any thinking."11
Youth is a time of ferment and rebellion, not to mention idealism and hope. The former pair of attributes, however, has been conveninetly exploited in order to further the interests of the status quo. Instead of focusing on scrutiny and collective action, youthful energy is channeled into a social malaise which defines freedom as "me against the world" and, more specifically, "me against the government". As Greg Guma, in an editorial to Toward Freedom's Global Media issue, explains: "appealing to fears of government intrusion is a convenient way to derail intrusions on the "right" to profit at the expense of the general health and well-being, and exploit in the name of freedom."12
Thus, children and youth are being given license to expand the territory of their private lives and the expression of their social angst through technology -- namely wireless telephony, digital multimedia, and the Internet. Conversely, an opportunity for meaningful, civil discourse is being squandered and is drowned out by the noise of people talking endlessly about only themselves.
Some go further, looking beyond political impotence. Tom Sherman, in a post to the Nettime list, notes how parents, police, advertisers and marketing agencies have all come together in a tacit sort of way to co-operate via broadcast technology as a means for maintaining social control. Admitting these supposedly disparate groups make strange bedfellows, they nevertheless are "clearly the purveyors of order in pan-capitalistic societies."13
According to Sherman, this tacit form of co-operation revolves around the need to stimulate and maintain consumer demand and economic activity. By keeping children (and people in general) busy shopping and consuming, chasing their dreams and desires in work and play, the enforcement of law and order is thus supplanted, and political impotence subsequently reinforced.
The negative effect of exploiting children via broadcast technologies in order to satisfy the economic, social, labour, and political aspects of a neo-liberalism can already be seen in certain parts of the world. Japanese society is one such example, which going through a transformation phase. Most observers agree that this phase is, in many ways, ending in failure. Unless laws are forthcoming which curb the interests of an elite few, then the future which we have borrowed from our children will be forever lost.