My teenage daughter came to me one day and announced that something terrible had happened to her four-year-old sister. She told me how she and her little sister were playing "pretend," and her sister decided to switch games: "I'm going to be the inside of a computer," the younger one announced, grabbing a pillow to be the keyboard and enlisting a sneaker as the mouse. "You can draw with me. I can play music to you. You can talk to me. Just click."

I assured my older daughter there was nothing wrong. Rather than a warning sign of a lost childhood dehumanized by technology, her sister's game was an utterly natural scenario for imaginative play; as regular as playing house or school. What struck me was how my older daughter didn't understand what the four-year-old saw instinctively—that the computer was something to play with, create with, express yourself with. I realized that my four-year-old belonged to a different generation. She was truly a kid of the digital age—a "Clickerati" kid.

While people often talk of the affinity that children show for technology, there's something deeper going on here. The Clickerati—kids born in the 1990s—have an entirely new relationship with technology; it defines how they learn and how they think. Eventually, this new relationship will transform the world of work and of consumers. In the meantime, it can serve as an example for the rest of us who are wrestling with how technology is changing our lives.

The Clickerati are different from previous generations in that they live and breathe technology. It's natural for them to make up games where they are the inside of a computer. Technology is not something that is special or exotic to them. It just is. There's no such thing as "high-tech"; it's simply my tech. These kids have Tamagotchis on their key rings, computers at school, and video-game systems in their bedrooms. They know how to surf the Web to download what they want; and if they don't know how to get to the next level of their Nintendo 64 game, they know where to go for hints.

By contrast, those of us who grew up in the 1960s thought of technology as being for scientists. When we used technology as kids, we simply consumed programs from two or three television channels and from radio broadcasts, whose content was determined by others, not by us. Even now, with technology all around us, my 18-year-old daughter's favorite technologies are the phone and the TV remote control. Her 15-year-old brother plays video games. But my little one, along with her Clickerati peers, does it all.

The Clickerati are born into a world of multiple phone and fax lines, of laptops in backpacks, and of screens all around. When they see a screen, they don't just expect to view something; they expect to be able to do something to it. Unlike previous generations, they see themselves as the designer, the one who is in charge of the technology, the master of the medium. They want to do something that leaves a stamp saying, "This is me!"

By controlling technology and designing with it, kids think differently than we do now.

Rather than fear technological change, the Clickerati welcome it. Our young kids are used to change, having witnessed huge improvements in the computing power and graphics of their toys. Kids expect change. Change is part of the fun.

Kids are nonlinear. Rather than follow straight-line logic, they are able to learn by exploring all the possible branches of an idea, then returning to the beginning and investigating all the branches of another idea. They are learning this powerful skill by osmosis—by playing video games and by looking for information on the Internet.

The Clickerati look for challenges. They don't want what's easy. They don't want only to be passively entertained. They're looking for what we call "hard fun." Think about it. In a video game, when you solve a problem, you're rewarded by moving to the next level and getting a harder problem—just like in the real world.

Kids are better at multitasking. If you enter the bedroom of a Clickerati kid, you find the TV on, the music on, and the kid playing a video game.

Because of this generation's unique approach to technology and learning, the traditional three R's—reading, writing, and arithmetic—are complemented by the three X's: eXploring, eXpressing, and eXchanging ideas using digital media. These are critical 21st century skills that kids are developing by playing around with the Internet and other possibilities of computers.

The idea that kids learn best by creating things for themselves was not new to me. I was born in Israel when the country was just a 10-year-old "start-up." My childhood memories are not filled with store-bought dresses and toys but of hours spent making costumes and toys we designed ourselves. Whether it was building homes, starting businesses, or setting up schools, people everywhere were starting from scratch. We learned to make our own, and in the process we learned how to learn.

But my conviction has grown over time, as I went to graduate school at Harvard and then did research at the MIT Media Lab. Exploring how technology could empower kids—from inner-city classrooms in Boston to girls' schools in Australia—became the focus of work by many of us at the Media Lab during the 1980s.

What I've learned most clearly—through my early work in the classroom and more recently in building MaMaMedia—is that the new generation is growing up with a sense of being in charge of what they create. With their intuitive understanding of using technology as a playful, personal learning tool, the Clickerati will ultimately redefine the very process of work and what it means to find, create, and share knowledge. Kids will learn how to think creatively, collaborate effectively, navigate choices, make decisions, find resources, handle challenges, and generate new ideas—the very skills all businesses will increasingly need in the work force of the 21st century.

The companies that fail to understand this fundamental change will be left in the digital dust. We can count on the Clickerati to find unique ways of getting their voices heard and ideas expressed as students, citizens, and creators. And we ought to listen. After all, these are the kids who know the fun of pretending to be the inside of a computer.

Dr. Harel—educator, scientist, and mother of three—is the founder and chief executive officer of MaMaMedia, an Internet company dedicated to advancing the technological fluency of kids through playful learning. She can be reached at Harel@MaMaMedia.com or through the MaMaMedia Web site at www.MaMaMedia.com.