Cyberkids or divided generations? Characterising young people’s internet use in the UK with generic, continuum or typological models

Abstract

Young people are often characterised as cyberkids in reference to an assumed intense engagement and natural affinity with the internet. This article critiques the empirical basis for such claims and explores two alternative perspectives: namely, continua of use and typologies of use. Using UK data on 12–15 year old home internet users, a series of descriptive and latent class analyses of young people’s internet use is presented. Results show there is little support for cyberkid characterisations and a proposed continuum of use is also shown to not fit the data. A three-way typology of use is instead presented which suggests a third of young home internet users make only limited use of the internet and the remaining two-thirds diverge into informational and creational/communicative users. These findings are used to argue that Mannheim’s notion of generational units may be a useful way to characterise young people’s internet use.