Laptops are the new Bicycles

It was one of my kids' birthdays over the weekend, and the most eagerly awaited present finally arrived - a Laptop. And as soon as it was all set up, my offspring and the whole "friendship group" (as they are called these days) were all chattering away online via IM, Online Games, etc

Laptops are the new bicycles.

Bicycles once represented social independence, you could go and see your more far flung friends independently of parental transport. In today's totally risk averse society ("let my child out on the street with all those pervs and loonies out there, you must be joking" is the refrain of a million mothers) the laptop (plus internet) has taken over.

Mobile phones - fuggedaboutit - the minute the big bandwidth and screen of a laptop is available, the mobile is relegated to being an out and about device. As it should be....

But as far as I can see, its not the "Social Network" per se that is their online home for the Yoof. The Social Network technologies of choice are IM and Skype, with their presence indicators, not Twitter or Facebook.

Just as with real life graffitti, most of the kids just want to chat, not write on walls..

(Ho Hum - I'll probably yet again have some academic treatise shoved at me telling me this is not the way kids behave today - my response is I actually have kids to observe, unlike many of the academics involved.....)

Afterthought - it goes without saying that this is now, no doubt as smartphones, netbooks and tablets converge a different device will do the job, but the laptop combines comms, TV/movie watching, game playing and even real work.