Grown Up Digital Is An Awful Book

This has to be the worst book I’ve read since The Secret.

Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing YOUR World by Don Tapscott is a book that promises to teach the reader about how the current generation is changing your world with technology. That generation used to be called Generation Y, now I guess it is referred to as Millennials or Net Generation (gag). The author had no sense of objectivity with his subject. Instead of learning the upside and downside to growing up in a world constantly plugged into digital technology, the author treated his subject as faultless demi-gods

The book reads like a collection of poorly written and outdated Wired articles thrown in a blender and repeated over and over. The author substitutes using words such as Twitter, Facebook, Blackberry, IM, and a host of other “buzz words” for real analysis. In one chapter, he glosses over the ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) findings of a study he cited with an example of how wonderful his daughter performs outside the laboratory.

The only good part of the book was when the author was critical of how Millennials seem not to care about their online privacy. He cited a study that employers do social network searching before hiring 25% of all jobs in the UK. That number is only going to get higher.

Maybe as a member of Generation X, I am biased. When I read the words of a Baby Boomer drooling with excitement over a generation that grew up understanding the Internet – from birth – I just roll my eyes. For every brilliant technological Millennial, there are hundreds of digital zombies. This book is a love story between a Baby Boomer parent and his offspring. If you are looking for a real research book that examines the effects of growing up in a wired society, this isn’t it.