Digital native - overly simplistic and potentially dangerous

Education is largely about meeting the emotional and social needs of young people so that they are well placed to learn (Maslow). Attempting to understand the world in which they live is vital even if generational detachment means that we will never fully be on the same page. So what is that world? Young people have grown up with most of the modern technology that older generations still think of as new. Young people starting school this term were most likely born in the same year that iTunes and Wikipedia were launched and Sega stopped making consoles. It was the year of 9/11, the separation of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman and the death of one of technology’s greatest fans, Douglas Adams. They were 3 when Facebook began and 6 when the first iPhone was released.

As Adams himself wrote in 2002’s Salmon of Doubt; “Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.” The digital world of social media and mobile technology is the “normal and ordinary” world of most secondary school-age students and “against the natural order of things” for most educators. This has given rise to the rather convenient labels of digital natives and digital immigrants.

A digital native is defined on Wikipedia as “a person who was born during or after the general introduction of digital technologies and through interacting with digital technology from an early age, has a greater understanding of its concepts.” Like most labels, this is altogether too simplistic. We’ve all seen video or had first-hand experience of small children interacting with tablet computers and mobile phones or bemoaned that way in which teenagers appear to be permanently glued to their Blackberry phones. The logical conclusion that is drawn is that digital natives instinctively know how to use all of the available technologies that have been developed before or during their young lives; that exposure alone is sufficient for efficacy.

This is, of course, nonsense. Young people need guidance and advice in all aspects of their lives, including those aspects which are perhaps new to those who might be educating them. Parents and schools have a responsibility to try and make sense of today’s world and help prepare young people for whatever tomorrow’s world might have in store for them. A digital immigrant, “an individual who was born before the existence of digital technology and adopted it to some extent later in life” (Wikipedia), is still best-placed to instruct and teach the younger generation and should not assume that everyone under a certain age is absolutely clued-up on modern technologies. I teach sixth form students who are ‘afraid’ of using email, who have never heard of Google+ or think that Facebook is for people in their 30s or 40s.

If schools turn a blind eye to the reality of social media and mobile technologies there is a very real risk that young people will learn how to use these exciting tools in an ill-structured and unsafe environment without the wisdom and guidance that educators should exude.