"If you deny a 14-year-old girl her mobile phone and MSN (Internet chat) access, it borders on child abuse," Elisabeth Staksrud told financial daily Dagens Næringsliv.
Staksrud is the European Commission's expert on attitudes to electronic media, and she is convinced that children's use of the Internet is far more advanced than parents and employers believe.
Next week the SAFT - Safety, Awareness, Facts and Tools - project, the world's biggest questionnaire on how the young use communication technology begins with support from the European Union. SAFT involves survey efforts from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Ireland.
The 2003 version revealed that nearly 90 percent of Norwegian youth between the ages of 13-16 chatted by Internet or mobile phone every week. Fewer than 3 out of 100 adults did the same.
Staksrud told Dagens Næringsliv that the Internet and mobile phones are a so vital part of the youthful social network that not taking part means not developing skills that are vital to social and eventually professional success.
"While business management think of the Internet as the web and e-mail, young users have a very much wider perspective. Business faces a gigantic management challenge to exploit the possibilities that these enormous networks represent," Staksrud told the newspaper.
