Do Teenagers Know More Than Older People?

A teenager just a very few years ago told me that people their age know a great deal more than people my age. I am sixty-four now.  The teenager said teens know more than older people because of the Internet.  I wonder if this is true.  Teenagers spend a great deal of time on the Internet.  The Internet contains a great deal more information than any sources we could access when I was a teenager, a twenty-something, or even a thirty- or forty-something.  Therefore, logically, teens have been exposed to more, a great deal more, information than we elders have.  

But do young people really know more than older people do? I guess that depends on your definition of “know.” According to Dictionary.com, “know” means “to perceive or understand as fact or truth; to apprehend clearly and with certainty.”*  

Teenagers today have definitely been exposed to more information than we, their elders, have. But are “exposed to” and “know” the same thing? Are reading information on a computer screen and physically experiencing life the same thing? Can people “understand” something by reading about it on a computer screen, or do people need to experience something in order to “understand” it?

*Dictionary.com (2019). know. In Dictionary.com. Retrieved July   27, 2024 from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/know