Digital Experts and Digital Natives - Essay Example

Digital Experts and Digital Natives Introduction The introduction of technology and the digitalisation of different spheres of life has affected the current generation and influenced the way they live their lives. According to Prensky, the generation that was born after 1980 can be classified together as the techno savvy generation with the ability to use different gadgets in their lives1. The term ‘digital natives’ was coined by Prensky to describe the generation that has known technology, used technology and preferred technical applications in their lives since they were born. This generation grew up with the new media before them and this makes them develop distinctive traits such as visual orientation, ability to multitask, active learning abilities and tolerance towards minorities for example the blacks in the united states. As such, the digital natives are the native speakers of the digital language and have the ability to control the approach adopted within technology based companies in the world2. With advances in social media and interactive websites, the participation of the youths has increased tremendously and this has been attributed to their digital language and nature. However, critics have argued that the use of social media and other online platforms does not qualify the youths to be referred to as the digital natives. Digital natives should have a behaviour that is reminiscent of a generation that they were born in. however; according to a report published by the Kaiser family foundation in 2010, the increased use of digital media among children aged below 8 years does not create an impression of digital natives. In this paper, the question of whether it is useful to conceptualise young online and social media users as digital experts and natives will be examined. Different research articles on digital natives and the generation born after 1980 will be reviewed to provide an in depth analysis of the topic3. Digital natives: myth or reality? To conceptualise the argument that the current youths are digital natives on the basis of their online and social media presence, the reality about the digital native discourse must be presented. The argument that the generation born after 1980 are digital natives while the pre-1980 generation are digital immigrants has been opposed and proposed by different researchers. To be considered as digital native, an individual must possess certain characteristics, skills, disposition and practises that are common among technology users. The fluid lifestyle of young people today has been technology assisted in different aspects that creates the multitasking impression on them. During their day-to-day activities, young people juggle digital applications to enable them effectively accomplish their tasks and assignments. The internet had been considered to play an integral role in the creation of formal and informal components of the youth’s lives. Through internet connectivity and usage, the youths have developed themselves into people who are no longer passive recipient of educational instructions but rather active players in the process. This is due to their ability to reconstruct the nature, place, pace and timing of the learning events and improves the impacts of education on their lives. The impacts of the communal creativity of Web 2.0 have been discoursed in a number of literatures to demonstrate how the digital originality is influenced by the youth’s social media interaction. As a result of the developed interactive social media sites, youths have grown into collaborative group that is willing to engage the input of their colleagues in various issues affecting their individual development. Social media presence as indicator of digital expertise and nativity Despite the positive and celebratory approach that different articles have approached the issue of digital nativity, the reality on the ability to use current and emerging digital instruments have cast a dark shadow on the ability of youths to be called digital natives and experts. The presence of sites like MySpace and Facebook has influenced the individual development of children due to the development of a culture of digital narcissism among them. Sites like Wikipedia, which are open source internet sites have also been attributed to, lowered academic performance due to their ability to undermine the authority of teachers. Learning has adopted a traditional and pragmatic approach for a long time but this has since changed due to the presence of social media and internet networking4. Sites like YouTube increase the desire of youths to self-express as opposed to learning the essence of nature and the universe. Though the articles demonstrating that the youths use of social media have remained persuasive on their digital nativity, these articles have been based on exaggerations and exhibit open inconsistencies. The growth in popularity in the social media sites can be attributed to a number of reasons including the fact that joining the sites is free and easy for any individual with a computer and internet connection. Entry is also not limited based on an individual’s social status, race or even religion and this has led to the cross-cultural adoption of Facebook and twitter across the globe by people of all occupations. Human beings are considered as social creatures whose lifestyle depends on the ability to interact with each other and have fun through communication and games. However, the 21st century is characterized by schedules that make actual interaction and communication between individuals impossible due to the different commitments that people are engaged in for different reasons. Social media has therefore provided a new platform for human to enjoy their social life without worrying about the geographical distance that separates them at any given time. Through Facebook and twitter, users are provided with an option to make virtual friends and interact with them in different ways to perpetuate the social nature of human beings. The growth of these sites into popular culture can thus be explained by the desire to fill the loneliness void created by the engagement that makes it impossible for people to interact physically. The disappearance of the natural sense of community as a form of life for man has also been used to explain the growth in Facebook as a popular culture among people of different ages. Through Facebook, users are given the opportunity to engage in a communal kind of conversation where they get the opportunity to discuss various issues in their lives that they would have discussed in actual meetings. Traditional tale telling by the fireside has been replaced by virtual tale telling through Facebook and twitter due to the different engagements that make it impossible for people to come together as often as they used to5. It is common to have individuals who have no idea who their immediate neighbor is or what he actually does but knows almost everything about another personal thousands of miles away. According to anthropologists, the emergence of social media as a popular culture in the United States and beyond can also be associated with the natural desire to groom. According to a report released by Facebook in 2008, the total numbers of users reached 175 million active users, a number that will make it the sixth most populous nation were it to be a country. However, a country has largely a homogenous population while Facebook have a heterogeneous membership that spreads through all races, religions and ages across the world. Due to the current acceptance of this culture in the United States, different organizations, churches and political parties are using the platform to advance their course. This demonstrates that this one of the popular ways of life that has come to be accepted in the United States and beyond due to the massive following that it has. Philanthropists and well-wishers have resorted to social media sites to connect to different individuals across the world to advance their course and help the needy others. As such, social media provides a platform through which users can search for others that share in their ideologies and form a large community of similar minded group guided by the desire to help needy people in the society. Social media such as Facebook and twitter have also attracted new group of users who aim to conduct scholarly and academic research by reaching different people as part of their study groups. Due to the current life of people that make it impossible to physically engage them in research activities through the administration of questionnaires, Facebook and twitter has made it possible to reach these people online and have them provide answers to their questions. Social media has also infiltrated the American politics and politicians are today adopting it to advance their political ideals, beliefs and plans by reaching out to a wide virtual population of voters. The development of social media into one of the accepted popular culture in the 21st century has also proved to influence the decisions made by governments and government agencies through the active monitoring of the response of the people. For example, the Middle East leadership crisis that began in Tunisia and led to a massive revolution affecting Libya, Egypt and now Syria can be attributed to the power of social media. To counter the increasing aggressions, many governments in the Middle East identified the popularity of social media and decided to shut the internet traffic to make communication and virtual gathering impossible. The reaction by the government recognized the current place of social media as a virtual interactive communal site where different people with same ideals interact and share ideas whenever they cannot meet in person to discuss the issues that affect them. Marketing and advertising are traditional business practices that target customers distributed across the globe to encourage and dissuade them to buy their products. However, radio and television are no longer popular as social media sites and this has led to the massive migration of corporations into Facebook and twitter. A number of organizations today have Facebook pages and twitter handles where they not only advertise their products but also interact with the consumers to help solve their problems and address their concerns. Social media is thus used by corporates to help in the brand creation process, manage online reputation and improve the trusts of the online customers, attract more customers to buy your products, to develop new technological means of production and to shield off competitors from eating into your market share6. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is one of the popular entrepreneurs and billionaires in the United States, not because of how much he makes in a year but because of the popularity of his site. Despite other computer science entrepreneurs attempting to create social media sites, Mark is considered as the first social media creator that has grown to become a household name and therefore a popular culture in his own way. Most youths and scientist at the silicon valley look up to Mark in their quests to make a difference in the world of programing and entrepreneurship, a fact that point out to the influence that social media alone has created on people. Social media has continued to grow in influence and diversify in its applications beyond the youths, communal groups or even campus students to incorporate corporates and social organizations. Different institutions including political parties and government agencies today employ social media to reach out to the people and sell their ideas to them, getting a free and large platform to persuade them into buying the ideas and agreeing with the plans. These and others demonstrate the place that social media sites have taken in our society and place that they will continue to play in our lives7. Teen social media usage Social media has been used as an indicator of the increased presence of teenagers and children in the internet and a show of their digital nativity. Through the social media, teens create, publish and share contents that reflect their current life style as youths whose life is punctuated with digital applications. The social media sites created and with massive youth and teen presence include social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, blogs and micro blogs like twitter and other online gaming sites. Through social media, youths have been able to advance their academic goals by engaging in discussions and handling academic coursework collectively as a community. With these tools, the digital natives have advanced their social communication skills, a privilege that the digital immigrants no longer enjoy. Through sites like Dweeber.com, teens and students can be able to discuss their class homework and help each other strengthen their weaknesses. Popular culture continues to grow in popularity and is influenced by the reception of the people, the institutions and the governments who continue to embrace it in different ways8. According to social research, 73% of teens spend their free time on social media and use it as a way of communication and interaction with friends. Though social media has been ostracized as negatively affecting the behaviors of youths, research demonstrates that the benefits of social media networks have clearly defined the digital natives. The ability of social media to enhance social connectivity among teens and children has led to the introduction of new communication channels that forms an integral part of the digital natives lives9. Based on some schools of thought, digital natives have been rendered lazy as the web 2.0 has eased their study processes and made the process of doing research to obvious as compared to traditional ways. For example, search engines have the ability to guess what an individual wants to search for from the internet and this according to the developers makes life easier when using this tool. When you begin searching for any item from the Google search engine, several suggestions crops up which are meant to guide your search and premeditate which sites you are supposed to visit. With this kind of predetermined results, life for the digital natives may seem easy but it is boring because the information we end up reading and gaining interest in is not exactly our initial interest. No one has an idea why the internet and its search engine narrows our information and guides our lives through sites that have spam like information. Communicating through using the emails has not been spared either as internet developers use this too to shape our opinion and control the range of information that reaches us. For instance you mail your friend concerning one dream you have had for long concerning one Christian Grey, pop message on sadomasochistic romance will be sent to you in streams. This, according to this school of thought makes children within the age bracket of digital natives lazy and not capable to make independent determinations without the help of the internet10. Despite having a high presence in social media, the digital natives do not directly control the events in some of these sites including Facebook. For example, some of the posts some of the posts that are posted by their colleagues and social acquaintances are not shown on their walls. This happened because the Facebook algorithm again considered the other posts, which may be opposite to her personal political beliefs irrelevant. The knowledge from both ends of life increases its worth and makes us more informed as we get to communicate, argue and interact with all despite the differences that may exist. This is not supported by the internet, which seeks to make our lives easier by restricting our access to information that only aligns to our opinions and ideals. This completely makes life boring as it infringes on our right to knowledge and to make decisions independently based on our desires and tastes11. Research has indicated a decline in the performance of new recruits and their ability to grasp the traditional approaches of accomplishing their tasks due to their overreliance on technology. the digital generation and especially those after the introduction of the internet and interactive websites have grown extremely reliant on technology and smartphones which affects their ability to deliver. Jobs like surveying still use old GPS technologies and gadgets which do not possess direct features like common digital gadgets. As a result, the digital generation are finding it difficult to adjust to new work environments as compared to their digital immigrant fathers and mothers12. Teen and youthful employees have also witnessed a significant change in the nature of the services they are expected to deliver to the public and the efficiency with which the internet has facilitated this has been quite amazing. The advances in digital application have led to significant revolution in the world of jobs and have created a number of jobs for people in the United Kingdom. With the development of new internet features under the web 2.0 interface, the internet has made it much easier for different employees to deliver their work from the comfort of their homes. A large number of the world’s total population depend on the internet as their sole employment and operate a number of virtual offices13. Conclusion The conceptualisation of the current generation as digital experts and native is thus based on false myths and believe about their abilities, which lack any actual basis on research. In our universities today, the number of students who have shifted from using actual print books to those using online books has been cited as a demonstration of the digital expertise of the current generation. The old generation, here referred to as the digital immigrants have demonstrated their abilities to use the gadgets that the youths are claiming monopoly on. If the old librarian can update the online books and make them accessible to the students, her mastery of the digital applications cannot be questioned14. The online presence of the youths have also been boosted by the presence of social media and the interactive web 2.0 sites, which does not require specific skills to operate. Based on the arguments presented in the paper, it is thus not useful to argue that the current generation are digital experts and natives based on their strong social media and internet presence. Bibliography Boyd, D., Friends, Friendster’s, and top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites. First Monday 11, 2006, p12. Buckingham, D, Defining digital literacy. What do young people need to know about digital media? Digital competence. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy vol.1 no. 4, 2006, 263-76. Buckingham, D, The electronic generation? Children and new media. In L. Lievrouw and S. Livingstone (Eds) Handbook of New Media: Social shaping and consequences of ICTs, p77-88, London: Sage Publications, 2002. Buckingham, D., Is there a digital generation? In D. Buckingham and R. Willet (Eds) Digital Generations: Children, young people, and the new media, 2006, p. 1-13 Das, R., Children reading an online genre: Heterogeneity in interpretive work, Popular Communication, vol. 10 no. 4, 2012. Drotner, K., Difference and diversity: Trends in young DanesâĂŹ media use. Media, Culture & Society vol. 22, no. 2, 2000 p149-66 Ito, M., Baumer, S., Bittanti, M., Boyd, D., Cody, R., Herr, B. & Tripp, L., Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and learning with new media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. Livingstone, S. & Drotner, K., Children’s media cultures in comparative perspective In: Nightingale, Virginia, (ed.) the handbook of media audiences. Global media and communication handbook series (IAMCR). Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, UK, 2011, p. 405-424. Livingstone, S., Children and the Internet: Great expectations, challenging realities. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009. Livingstone, S., Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers’ use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression. New Media & Society, vol. 10 no. 3, 2008, p 393. McMillan, S.J. & Morrison, M., Coming of age with the internet: A qualitative exploration of how the internet has become an integral part of young people’s lives. New Media & Society vol. 8 no. 1, 2006, p73-95. McPherson, T., Unexpected Outcomes and Innovative Uses of Digital Media by Youth. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. Read More