The term N-Gen was first used to describe this wave of youth in an article by Don Tapscott in Advertising Age. At that time there was a lot of debate about whether or not the Internet was an effective place to advertise. Don's conclusions were affirmative, but cautionary. On the Net, one has to advertise differently. N-Geners using new media have a new set of expectations. Among the themes of these expectations are:
With the Internet, advertisers have new ways to introduce messages into content. A maker of children's cereals was recently criticized for its site on which children could play with its promotional cartoon characters. This seems harmless enough. A bigger problem, however, arises when such sites use cartoon characters to promote products that can be harmful to children, such as cigarettes, or alcohol.
The problem is that if a site is designed to be accessed freely, it cannot restrict its users to a specific age group. This problem of demographic verification has plagued Web site content providers since the advent of World Wide Web. The only way for a site to find out what their user profile is, is to ask their users.
Should this kind of data be collected from children? The Centre for Media Education says no. They are seeking to end the practice of collecting any personal data about children unless they can verify that they have received parental permission to do so. In contrast, the advertising industry itself, Council of Better Business Bureaus, and the National Advertising Review Council, have proposed guidelines that suggest advertisers simply make reasonable efforts to convince children to ask their parents for permission before they divulge personal information.