The myths of the digital native and the multitasker

Generations X, Y, and Z

Control-Alt-Incomplete? Using Technology to Assess 'Digital Natives'

Technology capabilities are rapidly growing in the world of education. As distance education applications are being designed to be more user-friendly, online learning opportunities are becoming more of a reality in secondary schools and institutions of higher education, with students enrolling in online and blended courses. Many of the early and current distance learners are “digital immigrants,” that is, they are not well-versed in technology systems and need to adjust to a whole new way of learning to succeed in the online environment. However, future students enrolling in online courses will be “digital natives,” students who have grown up surrounded by the ever-evolving technology of the digital age. Digital natives acquire and process information in ways that are far different than previous generations, requiring educators to re-think the design and delivery of relevant curriculum. This chapter will discuss the phenomenon of digital natives and immigrants, current practices and perceptions, and a successful model of online learning in an upper elementary school classroom.

School Reform: The District Policy Implications of the Effective Schools Literature

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Digital language is the language of young generations; they process information very differently from previous generations. There is sufficient evidence to confirm that the impact of digital technology on youth is unjustly neglected and that the educational institutions and the authorities have a serious commitment to research this area. There is no education without communication, but what kind of communication is necessary for educational system in digital age? In the time before the advent of electronic mass media, the teacher was the most important for providing information about the world; he/she was responsible for setting up a student's system of values as well as society norms. The digital age has brought skills such as assessment, analysis, access, participation and creativity, necessary for solving everyday problems. The global phenomenon of 'digital natives' is discussed in a critical analysis and with special attention to their ability to learn in a traditional education system.

Generation Z, who are prospective customers, are digital natives. As the infrastructure and technology of the internet have developed, this study examines whether digital disruption demonstrates the uniqueness of Generation Z and affects their attitudes toward products they rarely see. Digital media, social network sites, and instant messaging are emphasized due to their relationship to digital disruption. Social networks (e.g., social network sites and instant messaging) encourage interactions and are therefore separate from digital media. The questionnaire in this study was based on a thorough literature review, and reliability and validity were ensured. A total of 505 responses were used for hypothesis testing by the bootstrapping method and ordinary least squares. The results partially comply with the suggestion that Generation Z depends more on information from digital media than previous generations. However, social networks have a greater effect than digital media and do not show generational differences. Although the nature and lifestyle differ across generations, certain circumstances (e.g., working requirements) cause people to not conform to the stereotype of a specific generation. Hence, digital disruption creates generational differences, but these differences can be eliminated through practice. Given the development of digital innovation and its wider systemic effects, this study discusses the disruption of digital technology and the emergence of digital natives. The influences and the interactions identified establish a foundation for empirical practitioners and future researchers.

Journalism, one of the noble professions of the society is prevalent in the vast majority of the world. The rise of social media over the decade has seen a strong influence on the way of news reporting and digestion by all parties within journalism, with the journalists taking on a developed role utilizing social media as both ways to deliver and to promote their works. Several researches have been conducted on what the role of social media to journalism, and from the perspective of different aspects within the industry. With the meteoric rise of social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and various news portals people claimed that we are entering to a new era where thoughts can be shared within 140 characters. The "age of digital media" is witnessing innovation and radical change across all aspects of journalism, creating economic difficulties for legacy media and a frenzied search for alternative business models to fund a sustainable journalism for the future.

For patient communities, digital media have dramatically transformed the options for action. This includes working collectively to change policies in ways that would have been difficult, if at all possible, before the internet. Yet, to date, the impacts of patients’ growing use of digital media on their sense of collective agency have been little explored. Drawing on the findings from an Australian study on patients’ use of digital media to access treatments (involving 50 interviews with participants from HIV/AIDS, breast cancer and neurodegenerative communities) and using a governmentality lens, this article sheds light on the changing character of patients’ sense of agency in an age of digital media. We identify a shift in patients’ conceptions of their agentic selves associated with the growing use of these media – from ‘activists’ to ‘advocates’ – and consider the implications for critical public health. As we argue, this ‘digital self-advocacy’ is manifest in patients’ accounts of how they use digital media to achieve their goals and reflects the responsibilisation that is a hallmark of neoliberal governance. We suggest that digital self-advocacy offers a restricted vision of patient agency that limits rather than facilitates actions needed to respond to crises and to advance health justice. In our conclusion we consider whether the context and the nature of a condition or disease may also have a bearing on patients’ sense of agency in an age of digital media, making reference to patient responses to a new illness phenomenon dubbed ‘long COVID-19ʹ.

Despite their familiarity with the digital, so-called 'digital natives' are not tech-savvy, particularly with respect to privacy and security. In this study we characterize this problem by looking at a cohort of South African students. We employ a web-based survey of 100 students, supplemented by in-depth interviews with 10 additional students. In both cases we inquired about, and observed knowledge of permissions, encryption and application installation practices. Our findings show that most students (80%) do not look for or understand permissions or encryption, and use location-based services unsafely. Based on these results we argue that digital natives lack the technical skills and understanding to properly engage with mobile privacy and security. We further argue that this generation has been so over-exposed to mobile requests that violate their privacy and security that they have become desensitized and their definition of privacy and security has changed. Lastly, we discuss the implications of our findings for higher education institutions, policy, and mobile application design.

The use of the term “digital natives” has led to a great deal of controversy. Most academics dislike it, for good and sufficient reasons. Among other problems, the term implies that digital skills are innate rather than taught and learned. But the term resonates for many parents, teachers, and policy-makers. In this article, we describe our efforts to reclaim the awkward term “digital natives,” despite its obvious defects, in an attempt to reach a broader audience for the sound social scientific research about youth media practices that is emerging from the academic world. Many—though not all—young people are using digital media in ways that are changing how they learn and how they relate to one another, to information, and to institutions. In this article, we make the case that the sum of these changes in youth media practices can be good for teaching and learning, but that they are not without complications. Along the way we also make the case, in tension with what others in this volume have argued, that the use of the term “Digital Natives” can be a constructive way to reach parents and teachers and that it can be done in such a fashion that is true to sound research about youth practices with respect to digital media. The roadmap to this Article is as follows. First, we explore the awkward term “Digital Natives,”1 explain why we have chosen to use it * Henry N. Ess Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources, Harvard Law School; Faculty Co-Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. The authors wish to thank Momin Malik and Sandra Cortesi for invaluable research assistance on this article. ** Executive Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University; previously Professor of Law, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. I/S: A JOURNAL OF LAW AND POLICY FOR THE INFORMATION SOCIETY 34 I/S: A JOURNAL OF LAW AND POLICY [Vol. 6:3 I/S: A JOURNAL OF LAW AND POLICY [Vol. 7:1 in certain contexts, and to describe some of the common attributes of this subset of the world’s young people today. Then, we will address some of the key problems faced by these young people and others in society. Last, we will end with a positive outlook. While there are problems associated with youth media practices, and challenges for large learning institutions in responding to those problems, overall we believe a bright future can lie ahead if we are smart about it and listen to sound research. The goal of our research has been to understand how young people use technology and relate to information in a digital era and to address the implications of lives that are highly mediated by digital technologies. At the same time, we have looked hard at articulated positions about youth and digital media that might be more myth than reality. One related purpose of our work is to examine what the most important implications of these practices are for learning institutions, including universities and libraries. In performing this research, we have built on the shoulders of giants. There are many other people who have studied this topic for a long time, like Mizuko Ito,2 danah boyd,3 and, at the Pew Center for Internet and American Life, Amanda Lenhart.4 While the most extensive empirical work on this topic has been done in the United States and in the United Kingdom, we have grounded our work in the 1 JOHN PALFREY & URS GASSER, BORN DIGITAL: UNDERSTANDING THE FIRST GENERATION OF DIGITAL NATIVES (2008). 2 MIZUKO ITO, SONJA BAUMER, MATTEO BITTANTI, DANAH BOYD, RACHEL CODY, BECKY HERRSTEPHENSON, HEATHER A. HORST, PATRICIA G. LANGE, DILAN MAHENDRAN, KATYNKA Z. MARTINEZ, C. J. PASCOE, DAN PERKEL, LAURA ROBINSON, CHRISTO SIMS, & LISA TRIPP, HANGING OUT, MESSING AROUND, AND GEEKING OUT: KIDS LIVING AND LEARNING WITH NEW MEDIA (2010); MIZUKO ITO, HEATHER A. HORST, MATTEO BITTANTI, DANAH BOYD, BECKY HERR-STEPHENSON, PATRICIA G. LANGE, C. J. PASCOE, & LAURA ROBINSON (WITH SONJA BAUMER, RACHEL CODY, DILAN MAHENDRAN, KATYNKA Z. MARTINEZ, DAN PERKEL, CHRISTO SIMS, & LISA TRIPP), THE JOHN D. AND CATHERINE T. MACARTHUR FOUNDATION REPORTS ON DIGITAL MEDIA AND LEARNING – LIVING AND LEARNING WITH NEW MEDIA: SUMMARY OF FINDINGS FROM THE DIGITAL YOUTH PROJECT (Nov. 2008), available at http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/report. 3 danah boyd, Why Youth ♥ Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life, in MACARTHUR FOUNDATION SERIES ON DIGITAL LEARNING YOUTH, IDENTITY, AND DIGITAL MEDIA VOLUME, 119–42 (David Buckingham ed., 2007), available at http://www.danah.org/papers/WhyYouthHeart.pdf. 4 Amanda Lenhart & Mary Madden, TEEN CONTENT CREATORS AND CONSUMERS, PEW INTERNET & AMERICAN LIFE PROJECT (Nov. 2, 2005), http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2005/Teen-Content-Creators-and-Consumers.aspx. 2011] PALFREY AND GASSER 35 I/S: A JOURNAL OF LAW AND POLICY [Vol. 6:3 extensive literature of researchers around the world.5 To the extent that we have relied upon the work of other colleagues, we have documented much of that reading in the form of two extensive literature reviews6 with a forthcoming third literature review led by Urs Gasser related to youth, media, credibility and information quality.7 A related piece, written in partnership with UNICEF, is a review of the literature related to youth media practice and safety around the world.8 Our book, Born Digital, also includes a Selected Bibliography that notes the texts and projects that most influenced our thinking.9 To complement the research work of others, we have also held our own series of focus groups and interviews to try and understand what the key issues are associated with how young people use digital media. 5 E.g., MACARTHUR FOUNDATION SERIES ON DIGITAL LEARNING YOUTH, IDENTITY, AND DIGITAL MEDIA (David Buckingham ed., 2007), available at http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2t NICOLA DORING, SOZIALPSYCHOLOGIE DES INTERNET. DIE BEDEUTUNG DES INTERNET FUR KOMMUNIKATIONSPROZESSE, IDENTITATEN, SOZIALE BEZIEHUNGEN UND GRUPPEN (2d ed. 2003); MACARTHUR FOUNDATION SERIES ON DIGITAL LEARNING DIGITAL MEDIA, YOUTH, AND CREDIBILITY (Miriam J. Metzger & Andrew J. Flanagin eds., 2007), available at http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2t SONIA LIVINGSTONE, CHILDREN AND THE INTERNET (2009); KIRSTEN DROTNER & SONIA LIVINGSTONE (EDS.), INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF CHILDREN, MEDIA AND CULTURE

The term “digital natives” was introduced in 2001 to describe a generation that has grown up surrounded by technology and the internet. The accompanying claims of a new way of thinking among digital natives were influential in shaping educational policy. Still, they were challenged by research that found no evidence of generation-wide cognitive changes in learners. Yet, the digital natives narrative persists in popular media and the education discourse. This study set out to investigate the reasons for the persistence of the digital native myth. It analyzed the metadata from 1886 articles related to the term between 2001 and 2022 using bibliometric methods and structural topic modeling. The results show that the concept of “digital native” is still both warmly embraced and fiercely criticized by scholars mostly from western and high income countries, and the volume of research on the topic is growing. However, the results suggest that what appears as the persistence of the idea is actually evolution and complete reinvention: The way the “digital native” concept is operationalized has shifted over time through a series of (metaphorical) mutations. The concept of digital native is one (albeit a highly successful) mutation of the generational gap discourse dating back to the early 1900s. While the initial digital native literature relied on Prensky's unvalidated claims and waned upon facing empirical challenges, subsequent versions have sought more nuanced interpretations. Notably, a burgeoning third mutation now co-opts the “digital native” terminology for diverse purposes, often completely decoupled from the foundational literature and its critiques. This study explains the concept's persistence as dynamic evolution of the digital native discourse in contemporary academic and public spheres.

This study examined the digital nativity of university teachers in China and tested the factor structure and measurement invariance from exploratory structural equation modelling analyses of the Digital Native Assessment Scale (DNAS) developed by Teo [(2013). An initial development and validation of a digital natives assessment scale (DNAS). Computers & Education, 67, 51–57]. Data were collected from 502 university teachers from 11 Chinese universities. The results indicate that Chinese university teachers demonstrate “digital native” characteristics. The results also support the measurement invariance of the DNAS across age, teaching experience, years of technology use, and years of teaching with technology. This study is the first in the digital native literature to examine the digital nativity of teacher cohorts using the DNAS. It addresses the issue of age when characterising digital natives and enriches our understanding of digital natives by empirically proving the validity of the DNAS in measuring teachers’ digital nativity in China. This study also has implications for policy makers who develop technology-related education policies and design continuing professional development training.

The article is devoted to the actively discussed question of the uniqueness of Net generation. The digital natives have been credited with the ability to multitask and high-speed information processing, greater efficiency in online work. According to many researchers, the high technological skills of digital generation require an educational approach radically different from that of previous generations. According to S. Benett and K. Maton, these appeals for revolutionary changes in educational policy and practice turn into “moral panic.” The analysis of contemporary empirical researches show that the digital skills and competencies attributed to the new generation are significantly overvalued, they need to be shaped and developed. The question regarding the ability of digital generation to adopt and adapt digital technologies remains controversial. The main characteristics of digital generation are distractibility, low attentional control and memorization ability, the problem with cognitive control, and, as a result, reduced educational achievements. The modified reward system and reduced self-control may lead to the Internet addiction formation. This article presents scientific evidence showing that designing education that assumes the presence of these abilities hinders rather than helps learning. However, this does not mean that we have to abandon the idea of technological modernization in education, this only means that new technologies should be used at the right time in the right place.

This study aims to ascertain digital natives’ perceptions regarding internal social media (ISM) use in corporate contexts. Consulting company surveys, although limited as scientific evidence, revealed that digital natives would, if they had choice, quit their jobs in the next two years, showing that engaging them is already a challenge. However, there is a gap in the literature as digital natives’ workplace behaviors remain unexamined, singling out this study as a unique assessment of digital natives with exposure to the workplace and its practices. An exploratory study was performed by applying content analysis of semi-structured interviews with recently employed digital natives. The findings suggest that the lifespan aspect may impact how social technologies are used for communication in organizational contexts; and that digital natives believe in a participatory culture created on social systems that impose a high level of contribution within the company. They recognize the adverse effects of ISM but consider that its advantages predominate, indicating an optimistic view. Whereas internal communication (IC) has been explored in multiple contexts, few studies address ISM influence on organizations. As such, this study contributes to the IC literature with a more granular understanding of enterprise social media’s role from the perspective of the most current workforce. It also contributes to the pragmatic field by proposing that organizations can take advantage of ambiguos but tending to positive perception of ISM and leverage its use by digital natives to promote employee engagement.