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What does a kid need to be a successful computer hacker? There are a number of requirements: access to a computer (preferably unsupervised), computer skills, opportunities to learn the necessary skills, and motivation. Each of these things is far more readily available now than it was ten years ago - so it far more likely that kids today will learn to hack than they did then.

While many families were purchasing computers for home use by that time, the phenomenon of a computer for each family member is still fairly recent. Ten years ago, family computers were more likely to be set up in a common area of the home, and to be shared by multiple users. They were also far more likely to be desktops as opposed to laptops, which means that they stayed put. The increased portability of laptops also contributes to the ease with which young people can avoid adult supervision of their computer use.

While it is easy to take the general population's computer competency for granted now, this is another area that first of all, is often over-rated, and secondly, was even less true ten years ago. Far more young people than you might expect are entering college in 2008 with minimal computer skills - in 1998, we did not even expect that they would have developed them prior to admission; we were still teaching them. Of course, there were exceptions the early adopters, geeks and nerds - and their children. But on the whole, computer skills were no where near as prevalent as they are today. Many of the motivated were still too busy learning to use computers effectively, or to program, to be working on learning to hack. Not all, of course but the hacker sort, who had both the skill and the privacy were far fewer.

When it comes to motivation - just as important, if not more so - than any real benefit to hacking behaviors, hacking has always been about notoriety, about showing off. Ten years ago, because the general population was not as computer savvy as they are now, someone who could fix, build, network or explain computers could well earn a reputation above the crowds. Now, so many more people have at least the basic skills that in order to stand out, hacking is more likely to be perceived as proof of one's ability, and so, there is more motivation to go there, particularly if one is a fifteen year old boy.

And last but not least, of course, the vast growth in the Internet has contributed to providing said fifteen year old boy with everything they could possibly need to know about whatever it is they want to do. It is possible to find millions of how to hack resources online, and to connect with other likeminded people all around the world. You don't even have to wait for downloads these days; broadband Internet is widely available.

Skills, resources and motivation: all are contributors to a far higher incidence of kids learning to hack in the 21st Century.

Learn more about this author, L. Lee.
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