The myth of the digital native
June 2004
Recently there has been much talk about a digital divide in our society. This is not the divide of other recent debates about access for poorer people to the benefits of ICT; this divide is supposed to be a generational difference in attitude and disposition to use technology. Those who are growing up now are referred to as digital natives and those who approach the technology with some maturity are termed digital immigrants (Prensky, 2001).
Prensky states:
"Our students have changed radically. Today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. Today's students have not just changed incrementally from those of the past, nor simply changed their slang, clothes, body adornments, or styles, as has happened between generations previously. A really big discontinuity has taken place. One might even call it a 'singularity' - an event which changes things so fundamentally that there is absolutely no going back. This so-called 'singularity' is the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century."
The notions of digital native and digital immigrant may be useful slogans for provoking argument. There have been clear social and cultural shifts that need to be investigated because they are deep and profound. However, the slogan does not stand up to inspection:
- The vast majority of children in advanced economies spend less than 30 minutes a day on computer games. The main demographic for computer games players is in fact 20-35 year-olds.
- The notion of a teenager tied to the phone calling their friends as an illustrative concept pre-dates the mobile phone (see 1960s US sitcoms). Most adults can afford to use voice rather than the cheaper SMS. Also 76% of adults in the UK have mobiles phones - this does not seem to indicate a major generation divide.
- Professional adults actually make more significant use of the different capabilities of ICT than anyone else - think of architects or accountants. or zoologists. Examine sales figures and marketing strategies of any major systems vendor.
- From the US: the highest usage of the internet at home is among 35-44 year-olds (29.2%).
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that testifies that not all teenagers spend lots of time with technology. They do lots of other things instead - riding horses, playing music, skateboarding or whatever.
This does not deny the idea that there is a profound change in the ways that we as humans mediate ourselves in the world. There is a lot of serious thinking going on about this that does not rely on sloganising. Ultimately hanging on to slogans like 'digital native' can lead to bad decision making. It is worth looking at serious literature on socio-cultural uses of information technology, eg JS Brown and Paul Duguid's Social Life of Information (Harvard Business School Press, February 2000). In this study Brown and Duguid's central theme is that access to information does not equate to knowledge. Brown and Duguid note, much of what we recognise as learning comes from informal social interactions between learners and mentors. These social interactions are difficult to achieve in mediated instruction. They recognise that technology can enhance instruction in remarkable ways; however, it cannot replace the insights that students receive by struggling to make sense of information with both peers and mentors. They contend that the gung-ho tunnel vision of commentators like Prensky - seeing only one way ahead (if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail!), has led to erroneously simplified and unrealistic expectations of what our future in the information age will be like.
In my own writing (Owen 2004) I recognise that any profound analysis of socio-cultural change, of the seamless web that weaves the ways we live with the tools we use, will change how we think, how we learn, what we may think and what we may learn. As Prensky suggests this may not be incremental, however it is also situated in diversity rather than dichotomy - and it is a lot less technologically deterministic. One of the slogans of this age is mass-customisation - the notion that we might be able to provide and sustain diversity for those who encounter digital technology in many diverse ways.
References
Brown, JS and Duguid, P (February 2000). Social Life of Information. Harvard Business School Press. Harvard
Owen, M (2004). Just a tool? In Monteith, M, ICT for Curriculum Enhancement. Intellect: Bristol
Prensky, M (October 2001). On the Horizon. NCB University Press, Vol 9 No 5
Links
Digital divide article: news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39117971,00.htm
Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants (Marc Prensky): www.twitchspeed.com/site/Prensky
%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.htm
Tomorrow's game market article: et.sdsu.edu/saeria/670/670webquestgamemarket/Future.htm
Internet access and usage article: www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fttn99/part2.html