It’s a good thing that new humans are born with the assumption that the things they need to learn are the way that things are. Or, to put it more simply, that the world that they were born into is the world as it has always been. It takes years, decades, maybe forever to understand that things were very different only a few years before you started.
Having ‘learned the world’ before computers and the Internet really took off can make for a rather steep learning curve, a challenge even to those with skills and attitudes more suited to working with digital technology. In contrast, children and students who have never known a world without Internet access and wireless communications.
I suppose it was the same way with our grandparents’ generation, dealing with the divide between those who were familiar with cars and television and loan refi, and those who had grown up without regular personal exposure to the causes of those culture-changing revolutions. People develop their basic approaches to life based upon the environment, and humans have a uniquely encompassing ability to introduce ‘game-changing’ elements into their environment.
Sure, there are still people who see things like USA online casinos as a new and more immediate threat to the youth of today…but these are the same people who would have liked to close down all of the USA gambling casinos before there was even an Internet to worry about…and I don’t think that I’m generalizing too much when I assert that these are the same people who are probably going to be generally resistant to technology, too — and, as a cause or consequence, probably less than well-informed about the specifics.
Of course, youth has it’s drawbacks too. A more familiar acceptance of new technology, and the marketing that goes with it, provides more room for abuse when there is no established frame of reference for a reasoned, critical judgment — especially when the culture that grows around the new technology seems to discourage such judgment, purposefully or unintentionally.