Summary:

Many new tools and mediations are at today’s children’s avail that we couldn’t dream of when we were growing up. At the same time, the millennium generation is also facing new challenges, which call for creative solutions. Today’s kids are growing up in a world increasingly shielded from nature; of ever more busy work and entertainment schedules; longer commutes; ‘disappearing’ third places; reorganizing neighborhoods; communities in transition; and recomposed families. And yet the children are extraordinarily resourceful. They invent their own surprising ways of navigating rough seas and seizing opportunities. Much can be learned from their genres of engagement. This chapter addresses six areas of change that inform how today’s kids play and learn, and, more generally, how they see themselves, relate to others, dwell in place, and treat things. Together, these areas offer a framework to rethink some of our own assumptions on what it means to be literate, knowledgeable, and creative, thus opening new venues for designers and educators to cater the native’s strengths while, at the same time, providing support for what they may be missing on, if left on their own.