User:Joanna.weintraub/sandbox

= Fingertip Generation = Fingertippers (also know as the Fingertip Generation) are the demographic cohort next in line to the Millennials. Research on this cohort is fragmented as we have failed until now, 2016, to properly name this individuals whose birth years range from the early 2000's to the present. This generation is characterized by youth that by age 5 can access, manipulate, utilize, and effectively learn from either Digital Age technology or the more transportable Smart phone technology.

Terminology
The Fingertip Generation refers to the individuals born fully immersed in the Digital Age. The generation directly after the Millennials, characterized by total immersion from youth with smart phone technology. Fingertippers have, by definition, little knowledge of life before smart phone technology, that allows constant tracking, information portals, global communication, and social networking. These individuals, with a swipe of their finger, can access information faster than any proceeding generation. They have the capacity via web browsing, video imaging, email communication to both work and play in ways no prior generation experienced. Those of the fingertip generation are in constant contact with either a computer or portable device from birth. Their images, communication structures, interests, musical tastes, and daily activities from banking to eating are recorded in a database, the cloud, for example, like no other prior generation.

Joanna Weintraub, parent and educator, is credited with naming this post-millennial generation in 2015 upon witnessing the transformation of culture within her own children and acquaintances. Weintraub uses 2002-the present to define the birth years of the Fingertippers.

The phrase is a continuum based on the preceding demarkation of Generation X  and Millennials. Upon seeing the failure to properly group the post-millennials, and noticing the unique attributes of children born into the fully digital world, Weintraub began to describe the defining qualities under the umbrella name of Fingertip Generation to others.

Notable qualities:

Access to information 24/7. Access to the internet 24/7. The taught and perceived value of this technology on self-image, job acquisition, social status, and connectivity to the greater community and world. Just as the Baby Boomers worked with the TV as a distraction, the Fingertippers are never absolved of the emminent email, text or snapchat from the moment they can click.

The Fingertippers have to navigate truth in a very different structure than prior generations because 'anything goes' on the internet. Free speech demostrated in the vast and seemingly endless world of instagram and blogs distorts fact and opinion in a novel way. The concept of Internet Safety is a striking example of the complexities in total digital immersion typical of the Fingertip Generation. These individuals are known to spend over 75 hours of media a week, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The Kaiser Foundation lovingly calls this cohort Generation M2. However, the fingertippers outpace the Millennials because they have simply seen more in every aspect of the word more.