Digital Natives and Immigrants Visit NYC

I spent the past three days in NYC with my two children and 17-yr-old niece. We couldn't have survived it without the Samsung Instinct and its lifesaving internet capability.

What time is the last ferry? Check the web on the corner of 45th.
What is the wait time for the Empire State Observatory before we walk the ten blocks to get there? Touch screen, web icon, Google.
Best pizza in Times Square? NYC mobile app. (It's John's Pizzeria on 44th, btw.)

We texted our way across the city. When we couldn't find the Build-a-Bear workshop, the 5 yr-old aptly reminded me I could use the navigation app for a walking route.

When we got separated 57,000 times in Chinatown's shady fake purse back rooms and alleys, we used the mobile devices to meet up again.

And then, on the subway back to the hotel, we actually had a conversation about what we'd been doing with these phones. When I came to NYC when I was 17, I didn't have a cell phone. Cell phones were not pocket sized back then, and I certainly wasn't wealthy enough to afford one, giant size or not. The niece, however, has had a cell phone since she was 13. She has always had a computer. And she cannot fathom the Commodore 64 I got for Christmas when I was a teenager.

She relies on her phone for celebrity updates and feels naked without it. She has never had a walkman. She has never had to call the movie theater to hear the movie listings by recording (and then listen all over again when she missed what the voice said.) For her, navigating NYC by phone was second nature, whereas I had to be reminded at every turn: look it up on your phone. And she is very, very impatient with slow loading and poorly designed sites.

She is, to a great extent, the audience for the mobile app I want to create. One academic year behind the students who will be using the activity reminder service I'm envisioning, she has the same digital profile. Ultra-comfortable with texting, and with texting services that send updates, she expects her phone to be a portal to knowing what's going on in the world. (Periodically, she would update me on Robert Pattinson's personal live as her text updates flooded in.)

So, all in all, I'm pretty confident that I've chosen the right subject for my app. I think they'll use it and appreciate it. It's almost as if actually going onto the internet is too old school. If you can't get it from your phone, it's too much work.