I recently finished reading a great book called “Born Digital- Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives” by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser. It is a terrific, and necessary, analysis of those born after 1980 into the digital world, who they are and what the world that they are creating might look like. It is an exhaustively researched book that touches on so many topics that are becoming ever more important in our digital age. Topics such as privacy, identity, gaming, the impact of the internet on how we learn and how we create and, of course, safety.

Many of the long term effects of the issues the authors touch on are unknowable and will only be revealed with the passage of time, but the authors are to be commended for approaching these subjects head on and searching for answers. If you were born BEFORE 1980, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of the book.

Mr. Palfrey is a faculty director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard and he chairs the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, which recently released the results of their year-long study about internet safety submitted to the 50 state attorneys general. The results might surprise you and the report is available for download.

Obviously, what resonated with me most was their recommendation that “Parents and caregivers should: educate themselves about the Internet and the ways in which their children use it, as well as about technology in general…”

Responses like this one from Illinois are not helpful, in my opinion. The Internet did not CREATE predators or scam artists or bullies or identity thieves, but it sometimes takes an unwarranted amount of the blame because it’s an easy target.

This is not a blog dedicated to book reviews, but every now and then I come across one that I want to share.

More information about the Digital Natives project can be found here.