Today's youth are the first generation for whom digital applications are a fact of life. As far as they are concerned, the internet and other digital media have always been around. In 2005, virtually everyone under the age of 25 in the Netherlands had internet access, an e-mail account and a mobile telephone. The young are the pioneers in the use of the new digital applications and have become known as the 'internet generation', the 'dot.com generation', the 'SMS generation' and various other epithets referring to their intensive use of ICT.
The Rathenau Institute wished to find out what is happening in this generation's digital world. And what effect does such intensive use of digital applications have on personal development? This information can be used as the starting point for policy that addresses the new developments effectively.
The project involved three main undertakings:
1. Production of a book, De Digitale Generatie ['The Digital Generation'], published in May 2006. The Rathenau Institute and the Netherlands Institute for Social Research also oversaw the production of the ICT and Society Yearbook 2006, which examines how young people use ICT to maintain social relationships, entertain themselves, learn, work, develop the political opinions and express those opinions.
2. Focus groups, bringing together young people (14 to 25), representatives of the creative industry, the commercial sector and opinion-formers.
3. 'The Digital Future' thinktank; three sessions were held in which leading figures in ICT outlined a vision of information society of the future, seen from the perspective of the new digital generation.