screenager

(SCREE.nay.jur)

n.

A young person who has grown up with, and is therefore entirely comfortable with, a world of screens, particularly televisions, computers, ATMs, cell phones, and so on.

Example Citation:

The Net has become a powerful way to sell to youth, whether concerned parents like it or not. For most Gen Y kids — those born in North America after 1979 (about 60 million at last count) — technology is second nature. It's as if they come into this world with a game controller in one hand and a mouse in the other. They're referred to as generation wired, cyber tots, digital kids and screenagers, but what they really are is business. Big business.

— Michael Snider, "Hey, kids! Let's play adver-games!," Maclean's December 23, 2002

Earliest Citation:

Meanwhile, new magazines are rapidly being launched to target the home market. Oakland-based Blast Publishing Inc. is preparing to launch a major national magazine called Blast, which, according to Publisher Doug Millison, will be a "lifestyle magazine aimed at 'screenagers', teenagers and twentysomethings that have grown up with PCs and video games."

— Tom Foremski, "Homes are prime PC frontier," The San Francisco Examiner, June 19, 1994

Related Words:

digital native

generation D

generation lap

Generation Y

N-Gen

nexus generation

nico-teen

second screening

third screen

transliteracy

videophilia

Category:

People