By Glenn Derene
Forbes.com
Today’s technology is like yesterday’s rock ‘n’ roll: Most parents, even if they think they’re pretty cool, just don’t get it.
Modern kids are technology sophisticates. They often are able to perceive–and utilize–a new device much quicker than adults. Text-messaging, for example, is the most popular thing to hit the youth market since anti-acne cream.
The average, middle-class American kid–from six to 18–usually has a computer, videogame player, TV, DVD player and, more and more often, a cell phone. The technological habits children now develop will likely influence their future lives. The more comfortable they become reading online, for example, the more likely it will be that, as they mature, they will read less actual print material. They will spend more time downloading music and movies from the Internet than they will actually going to record stores and the cinema.