The newest digital divide

There are a growing number of "digital divides." There's the one publicly discussed since the Web's early days (between tech haves and have-nots), the newer one between digital natives (kids) and immigrants (adults), the one between the social networks' commuters (the ones who use them every day) vs. tourists (adults looking in on them), and now indoors vs. outdoors. "Today's youngsters and their parents are more wired and more scheduled than earlier Americans, leaving less unstructured time to spend outdoors," the Christian Science Monitor reports. "For the kids, that can mean missing out on childhood bonds to nature. Alarmed, conservationists and government officials are looking for ways to reverse the trend." The Monitor mentions Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, who cites studies showing that "exposure to nature boosts attention spans, reduces stress, and could be an antidote to the rising problem of childhood obesity." Clearly a balance - between scheduled and unscheduled, indoor and outdoor, and tech-enabled and tech-free time – is needed. It's quite possible, though, that kids are all by themselves moving into a new phase in which the shiny-new luster of tech-enabled socializing fades into being just a part of blended in-person/virtual social lives – see "Some youth rethink online communications."