

Is it really helpful to talk about a new generation of “digital natives?” - ra
http://www.economist.com/science-technology/technology-quarterly/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15582279

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Vivtek
Good article. My kids have grown up surrounded by Internet-enabled computers
and, while they're skillful with them and I've always boggled at the notion of
people for whom Google has always been available, they're not qualitatively
different from anybody else I know.

Idiocy like the cited suggestion of having professors deliver their lectures
on Facebook (because God knows lectures are _just like_ idle chat) has always
bothered me. It just makes me think the suggester has no fricking clue about
the Internet, but wants to be seen as a visionary.

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doron
I work with a great number of people who are younger then me. between 10 to 15
years younger.There is a great number of them that treat computers with
suspicion, if i bring up the terminal (on osx) they are often in shock.

A good amount of younger people, are not tinkerers, and i feel tinkering is
the impetus that drives many people who become developers or other IT oriented
workers.

The curious thing for me, is that i have an unverified suspicion it was
different before, there was less of this suspicion when i was young, probably
because the assumption that "it just works" was viewed as marketing, and not
reality (blow on those cartridges, and DJ on the floppy disk to skip bad
sectors, you remember that?)

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ZeroGravitas
This false meme is one of my pet peeves, nice to see a typically restrained
takedown from the Economist.

The comments are good too.

~~~
ableal
> The comments are good too.

 _The only difference between generations is that my students write incoherent
sentences on paper and the internet._

I have this sinking feeling that an average ninth-grade graduate of fifty
years ago (basically what it took to be a secretary, if I've got my bearings
right) was about as competent and educated as today's college sophomores
(present company excepted, of course).

So, extrapolating from two dubious data points, we're extending childhood by 5
years every 50 ... 29-year old "minors" coming up by the end of the century
;-)

~~~
ugh
Any real data to support this? Would sure be interesting to know.

~~~
ableal
Education schools may have the data, but it's probably in their best interest
to bury it deep ;-)

A search for "infantilization" may get you something. I hit this:
<http://infantilization.blogspot.com/> \- apparently short lived, may be a
start.

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j_baker
"A recent study by the Pew Research Center, an American think-tank, found that
internet users aged 18-24 were the least likely of all age groups to e-mail a
public official or make an online political donation."

E-mailing public officials is a decent point. However, I don't necessarily
think you can hold them not making donations against them. The 18-24 age
bracket is probably one of the poorest as well.

~~~
barrkel
Young people are generally not politically engaged, either.

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tkahn6
I think 'digital native' is actually a pretty good way to classify a member of
my generation - I've never not had a personal computer in my home. I would
imagine this has greatly shaped the way I locate and consume information.

However, what the term 'digital native' tends to connote is an intricate and
intuitive notion of the underlaying principals of modern technologies (how
does a computer work, what is the internet) - and this is certainly not the
case for nearly all members of the "Net Generation". For most, technology is a
black box; just as mysterious as it is to our parents - it's just more
familiar.

In my experience, most kids' technological proficiency extends to Microsoft
Office. Most have very little interest in actually understanding the
technology they use.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
In my experience I find that there are _at least_ 50 people misusing Office
for every one using it in any sane manner. I would be surprised if this was
any different for the so-called _digital natives_ , (of which I am at the
older end of the age range).

The other appalling thing about the "digital native" meme is that it
originally had a very specific meaning (basically that we should rip out and
replace the entire educational infrastructure because the existing system is
very broken--which I generally agree with--but only because kids today are in
some way different from their elders--which I don't) which has been lost and
now it's basically meaningless and reduces down to something like "computers
are hard, they scare me, kids today scare me too."

