Now some questions: Do your children share files with others while using IM? Do they download music and video files from peer-to-peer websites, such as Limewire, and share them with friends? Do they use Internet telephony, also known as VoIP, to talk to others on the Internet? And do they use webcams to make video calls?

Many hands — a majority, in fact — are still up. I also see many quizzical faces. Are you feeling like an old dog who didn't know the kids knew all these digital tricks?

Have you ever seen your children chatting, while using Internet telephony, while downloading music or sharing files, while talking to someone on a cellphone? Some of you are rolling your eyes, as if you can't believe kids can concentrate on anything when they are doing so many things. Amazing, but they can.

According to some, the Internet was born as a university network backbone in the early 1980s and opened to commercial interests in 1985. The World Wide Web was launched about a decade later. An entire generation has grown up — one might say evolved — with the Internet. That generation is shopping. Many of its members are now running businesses. Some (deep breath) have kids of their own.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you think kids are playing on-line, you are correct. However, they are also learning how to communicate, collaborate, and multitask. If you hope to conduct business with kids like my 16-year-old and her friends, you have to get with their program.

My daughter has been using IM for about as long as she could operate a mouse and keyboard. She's had a webcam for several years. She shares music, images, homework, and other files. She uses her cellphone more for text chat than voice calls. (We have to bug her to check her voice messages. Her reply: “Why didn't you text me?”)

The big question is this: Why is it taking business so long to catch up to the kids? Need proof that business is lagging behind? Then answer these questions: Do you use instant messaging to collaborate with colleagues, suppliers, or vendors? Do you use VoIP to communicate? Do you use video conferencing or place video calls from your computer? Do you work collaboratively on files with your peers, clients or associates? What happened to my sea of hands? I see barely a puddle out there.

Have you ever engaged in text chatting, while using Internet telephony, while downloading files from another computer, while talking to someone on a cellphone?

A hand! You, sir, tell me about yourself. I see, you are a 21-year-old entrepreneur who runs a global on-line marketing company with business partners, associates, and clients in 15 countries. Most clients find you through your blog, not on a static website. You have only met your partners, associates, and clients on-line. Although you hold video conferences, chat, and talk with them regularly, you never pay long-distance fees. You, sir, are the future of business.

Today's kids are going to run virtual circles around companies that conduct business in conventional ways. Even businesses that have high-speed connections to the Internet or IP-based networks connecting regional offices are, for the most part, not working the way kids do. Sure, they have made great strides, but they are still miles behind the kids.

While I understand that the Internet is not as secure or reliable as business would like it to be, this has not stopped kids from communicating, collaborating, and multitasking. When they hit a glitch, they shrug their shoulders and work around it. Sure, there are technical issues and budgetary considerations associated with moving enterprises from existing computer networks to IP networks that will let them collaborate, communicate and multitask internally, and it can get even scarier reaching out beyond the enterprise, through the public Internet, to clients and associates. But that aside, too many companies seem content to delay the day of reckoning. By doing so, they are delaying the day that they will be able to interact successfully with the next generation of customers, suppliers, and vendors.

Next time your kids are on-line, ask them to tell you — really tell you — what they are doing. They will reply with glowers and give you suspicious glares, as kids do, but you should politely persist. It may seem that they are just goofing around, and maybe they are, but if you learn how to read between the lines of their digital universe, you may be surprised what you can learn about communicating, collaborating and multitasking — in short, running a business — from your kids.

Hands up if you are going to give it a try. Come on now. There. That's the spirit! Let's prove to the kids that the old dogs can learn new digital tricks after all.