It's Complicated

7. literacy - are today's youth digital natives?

Because teens grew up in a world in which the internet has always existed, many adults assume that youth automatically understand new technologies. From this perspective, teens are "digital natives," and adults, supposedly less knowledgeable about technology and less capable of developing these skills, are "digital immigrants." Two Massachusetts state government officials echoed this notion in 2010: "The children who attend school today are digital natives who think nothing of learning through the use of technology. As adults, we are digital immigrants who remember lessons delivered through film strips and overhead projectors. In a state where digital pioneers flourished, the educational system should catch up to the students." [1] Many of today's teens are indeed deeply engaged with social media and are active participants in networked publics, but this does not mean that they inherently have the knowledge or skills to make the most of their online experiences. The rhetoric of "digital natives," far from being useful, is often a distraction to understanding the challenges that youth face in a networked world.

In my fieldwork, I often found that teens must fend for themselves to make sense of how technologies work and how information spreads. Curiosity may lead many teens to develop meaningful knowledge about social media, but there is huge variation in knowledge and experience. I interviewed teens who used programming scripts to build complex websites. I also talked with teens who didn't know the difference between a web browser and the internet. I encountered teens who had nuanced understandings of different kinds of web content and helped create and spread internet culture via popular memes. I also met teens who couldn't recognize spam.

Teens may make their own media or share content online, but this does not mean that they inherently have the knowledge or perspective to critically examine what they consume. Being exposed to information or imagery through the internet and engaging with social media do not make someone a savvy interpreter of the meaning behind these artifacts. Technology is constantly reworking social and information systems, but teens will not become critical contributors to this ecosystem simply because they were born in an age when these technologies were pervasive.

It is dangerous to assume that youth are automatically informed. It is also naive to assume that so-called digital immigrants have nothing to offer.[2] Even those who are afraid of technology can offer valuable critical perspective. Neither teens nor adults are monolithic, and there is no magical relation between skills and age. Whether in school or in informal settings, youth need opportunities to develop the skills and knowledge to engage with contemporary technology effectively and meaningfully. Becoming literate in a networked age requires hard work, regardless of age.

The Emergence of the Digital Native

The notion of digital natives has political roots, mostly born out of American techno-idealism. In an effort to force the global elite to recognize the significance of an emergent mediated society, John Perry Barlow, a renowned poet and cyberlibertarian, leveraged this concept to divide the world into "us" and "them." Barlow, best known as the former lyricist for The Grateful Dead, was quite comfortable using provocative words to express political views. As mentioned in the Introduction, he penned "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyber- space" for the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1996. His manifesto was an explicit challenge to the "Governments of the Industrial World."

In positioning those who "come from Cyberspace" in opposition to the old world order, he juxtaposed the "native" against the "immigrant":

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.[3]