Wired generation holds Net values

    Computers and the Internet hold an indispensable place in the lives
of a vast wave of teens finishing high school, the first-ever group to
grow up completely immersed in the Web world.


By David Plotnikoff

San Jose Mercury News

    June 28, 2003

    SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The first wave in a generation of teens unlike
any other have graduated from high school: The vast majority of them
will remember an adolescence lived to an astonishing degree on the
Internet.

    These teens, some of whom have been online nearly a decade, are
among the Internet's first natives, at home in the wired world to a
degree their parents may never wholly understand.

    A survey of more than 800 Silicon Valley children ages 10 to 17 and
their parents, conducted by the San Jose Mercury News in partnership
with the Kaiser Family Foundation, finds that the Net is a powerful and
often ubiquitous presence in school, at home and in the social lives of
almost all.

    Sateja Parulekar, 16, a junior at Presentation High School in San
Jose, is part of this new breed of digital sophisticate. She is literate
in programming languages and applications. This summer, she will work in
the information technology department at National Semiconductor Corp.,
her father's employer. She has switched her intended college major to
computer science from prelaw.

    Fueled by the confidence that comes from being 16 and deeply
accomplished in tech, she said, "If I still want to pursue law, I can
always go to law school after. I could always work for a software
company, maybe as a patent lawyer."

    Technology will be her future, but it is not the entirety of her
present. This summer she is going for her second-degree black belt in
tae kwon do. And there's piano. And hip-hop dance. And classical Indian
music.

    Right behind those like Sateja are the average Silicon Valley teens
and preteens who would never identify themselves as part of a tech
elite, but who have skills that would mark them as power users in any
region where digital culture is not so all-consuming.

    Among those surveyed who said they had gone online (96 percent),
nearly half said they had created a Web page, written a computer program
or assembled a home computer network. Three in five had helped adults
set up or repair computers.

    For many Silicon Valley teens and preteens, the Net's true value is
measured in social currency. The hours in front of the screen are spent
communicating with family and friends--and some strangers.

    With its urgency and capacity to accommodate multiple conversations
simultaneously, instant messaging is the hot social application for
kids. Two-thirds of those online use it, the survey found, while 40
percent spend time in chat rooms or post to message boards. Together,
these social tools are ever present in the lives of many young people.

    Although juggling multiple streams of IM conversation consumes hours
for many kids, it hasn't taken the place of the telephone or
face-to-face communication. Aside from in-person contact, 71 percent of
online teens said they preferred the phone for keeping in touch. Instant
messaging was the preferred medium for 18 percent, while just 7 percent
said e-mail.

    Girls are slightly more likely to use IM than boys are.

    Monica Newman, a freshman at Branham High School in San Jose, is
maxed-out on IM. When the 14-year-old boots up the computer in her
bedroom, she usually finds dozens of her buddies logged onto IM. Her
"buddy list" is at 200 screen names. "That's the most you can have on a
buddy list," Monica said. "It's how I talk to my friends."

    There's a fair chance that at least a few of the people these kids
chat with aren't familiar faces at home. One in three teens and preteens
surveyed said they know some friends only online. One in four said they
have met someone online whom they wouldn't have otherwise known.

    The belief that the Internet will play an important role in their
children's education and success later in life was widespread among
parents of all income levels, the survey found: 96 percent said the Net
is important to their children's education, and 94 percent believed it
will be important later on.

    "Right now, a lot of things are driven by computers, and in the
future everything will be computers," said Danelia Lara, whose
daughters, Danelia and Nereyda, are using computers to work on
biotechnology projects at Andrew Hill High School in San Jose. "It's all
about advanced technology for these kids."

    The Mercury News survey shows dramatically how the children of
poorer families have all but closed the gap in Net usage. Far more
parents with household incomes more than $100,000 use the Net than do
parents with incomes less than $50,000 (98 percent to 53 percent). But
among their children, the gap narrows dramatically (99 percent to 90
percent).

    "My mom really wants to learn," said Danelia Lara, 18. "I tried to
teach her how to use Microsoft Word and send e-mails, but she doesn't
get how you put information on the Internet."

    On the few occasions her mother has ventured online with help from
her children, it was to download recipes from Univision.com and read up
on her novelas, Spanish-language soap operas.

    The Clinton-era crusades to put schools online have been a
resounding success. According to the National Center for Education
Statistics, 99 percent of public schools have Internet access, up from
35 percent in 1994, making them the provider of universal Net access for
the nation's children.

    The survey shows how schools in Silicon Valley serve as a crucial
bridge to the virtual world for Hispanic children and those from
less-affluent families. Yet access at school still leaves these kids at
a disadvantage.

    Among the 10- to 17-year-olds surveyed who go online, three in 10
from households earning less than $50,000 said they relied on school for
their primary access to the Net, compared with one in six overall. One
in three Hispanic Net users said they mainly relied on school for
access, compared with one in 10 for whites and Asians. Hispanics also
were twice as likely to say they learned their Internet skills in
school.

    "Students need to have access, because this is really key for their
future," said Thien Nguyen, state and federal programs coordinator at
Andrew Hill High School. "They talk about the three R's--reading,
writing and arithmetic. Technology is really becoming the fourth thing
there."


VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
 VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html