The current very young generation’s worldview and life will be shaped in very deliberate ways the new magical high-tech gadgets coming out this year -- Google’s Nexus One phone and Apple’s impending tablet among them. They’ll know nothing other than a world with digital books, Skype video chats with faraway relatives, and toddler-friendly video games on the iPhone.

But these are also technology tools that children even 10 years older did not grow up with. The ever-accelerating pace of technological change may be minting a series of mini-generation gaps, with each group of children uniquely influenced by the tech tools available in their formative stages of development. People two, three and four years apart are having completely different experiences with technology.

These mini-generation gaps are most visible in the communication and entertainment choices made by different age groups. Teenagers are more likely to send instant messages and play online games than slightly older 20-somethings.

Those in the Net Generation, now in their 20s, spend two hours a day talking on the phone and still use e-mail frequently. The iGeneration -- their younger siblings -- spends considerably more time texting than talking on the phone, pays less attention to television and tends to communicate more over instant-messenger networks.