“Casey’s habits underscore a new reality for this networked generation: Social networks -- and the gadgets they run on -- aren’t a distraction from real life, but a crucial extension of it. Born in 1999, just a few years after the mass adoption of the World Wide Web, Casey belongs to the first true generation of digital natives, who have no memory of life before the Internet. The eighth-grader, who lives in the northern New Jersey town of Millburn, has always been attached to her gadgets. When she was only 18 months old, she received a toy computer that quickly became her favorite plaything. In second grade, she got her first cellphone (“it could hold two numbers, it was stupid,” she says). Now, at 14, she’s the proud owner of a white iPhone 4S, which she takes with her to school, carries as she wanders around her house, uses at the breakfast table, and keeps beside her pillow when she sleeps at night. “I bring it everywhere. I have to be holding it,” Casey says. “It’s like OCD -- I have to have it with me. And I check it a lot.” • #trendtaste - × × ×