I read a study a while ago that was conducted with a group of 12-14 year old young girls, and their daily communication habits. The individuals in this study group averaged 6-8 hours of "on line" time per day - between Facebook, twitter, texting, on and on.
The study itself was very interesting, but one of the little girls quotes particularly struck me - she said: *"when I don't have my phone, I am no longer sure who I am". *
Their personalities are now an extension of the network, or the cloud.
It seems to me that we have already moved beyond the "digital natives" and now have a generation of what I'll term "cloud citizens", or "cloudizens". Their consciousness is partially in the cloud.
Cloudizens see themselves as a group consciousness - and no longer necessarily as individuals. They vet everything to their group. And in the case of this study group, there is seldom any adult supervision. I have no idea what this portends, but it seems to me that Cloudizen thinking is closer to the hunter / gatherer period (tight knit groups) than the agricultural and industrial age of individuality. Before you condemn the Cloudizens, turn your smartphone off for a day. You are closer to them than you think.
*"Humans say: First we use machines, then we wear machines, then we become machines. Machines say: First we serve humans, then we augment humans, and then we are humans." - * Kim William Gordon