Digital Natives Think Twice about Disclosure

Today’s children (ages 3-12) are more experienced using the Internet than previous digital natives. But how are they different from other web users? Jakob Nielsen’s latest usability finds that most of the same web design guidelines apply with some important differences.

First, digital natives have more difficulty distinguishing advertising and promotions from web site content. Where adult Internet users tend to ignore banners and advertising, children are inclined to click and explore everything on the page.

Second, while adults hardly think twice about sharing personal information, children are more aware of privacy and security issues. Digital natives think twice before disclosure.

It seems that we’ve taught our children about stranger danger (in this case, the stranger is a computer), but we need to work on media literacy.