Debunking the ‘digital native’: beyond digital apartheid, towards digital democracy

Abstract

This paper interrogates the currently pervasive discourse of the ‘net generation’ finding the concept of the ‘digital native’ especially problematic, both empirically and conceptually. We draw on a research project of South African higher education students' access to and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to show that age is not a determining factor in students' digital lives; rather, their familiarity and experience using ICTs is more relevant. We also demonstrate that the notion of a generation of ‘digital natives’ is inaccurate: those with such attributes are effectively a digital elite. Instead of a new net generation growing up to replace an older analogue generation, there is a deepening digital divide in South Africa characterized not by age but by access and opportunity; indeed, digital apartheid is alive and well. We suggest that the possibility for digital democracy does exist in the form of a mobile society which is not age specific, and which is ubiquitous. Finally, we propose redefining the concepts ‘digital’, ‘net’, ‘native’, and ‘generation’ in favour of reclaiming the term ‘digitizen’.

Students in higher education: Social and academic uses of digital technology

“…However, the assumption that there is a generation of young people -born between 1980 and 1994 -who are characterized by their familiarity and confidence with digital technologies, and who have different learning styles and behavioural characteristics, has been called into question internationally on the basis of rigorous studies by Bennett, Maton and Kervin (2008), Pedró (2009), Brown and Czerniewicz (2010), Corrin, Lockyer and Bennett (2010), Helsper and Eynon (2010), Kennedy, Judd, Dalgarno and Waycott (2010), Bullen, Morgan and Qayyum (2011), Rapetti (2012), and Romero, Guitert, Sangrà and Bullen (2013). Indeed, some of these studies suggest that students of the same age vary greatly in the way they use technology.…”

“…The argument runs that today's students start their university studies after having been exposed to a wide range of digital technologies that did not previously exist (Brown & Czerniewicz, 2010), as they are immersed in Web 2.0 technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, podcasts, wikis, blogs and virtual worlds (Bicen & Cavus, 2011).…”

Digital Fluency and Social Media Use: An Empirical Investigation of WeChat Use

“…First, groups with different digital status (e.g., digital natives vs. digital immigrants) have different learning abilities. Digital natives are usually believe to have high digital fluency [34] while digital immigrants to have low digital fluency. It is posited that digital natives have higher capacities and richer experiences of mastering modern technology, i.e., social media [18].…”

Networked Learning, Stepping Beyond the Net Generation and Digital Natives

“…These include studies in the United States (Hargittai, 2010;Salaway, et al, 2008;Smith, et al, 2009;Borreson Caruso. 2010) andCanada (Salajan, et al, 2010;Bullen, et al, 2009) , Australia (Judd and Kennedy forthcoming;Kennedy, et al, 2006Kennedy, et al, , 2007Kennedy, et al, , 2008Kennedy, et al, , 2010Oliver and Goerke, 2007;Waycott, et al, 2009), United Kingdom (Margaryan, et al, 2011;Jones and Healing 2010a;Jones and Hosein 2010;Jones and Cross, 2009;Selwyn 2008), other European countries (Schulmeister, 2010;Ryberg, et al, 2010;Pedró, 2009), South Africa (Thinyane, 2010;Brown and Czerniewicz, 2010;Czerniewicz, et al, 2009), Chile (Sánchez, et al, 2010) and Hongkong (McNaught, et al, 2009). This empirical evidence from around the world, in contrasting economic conditions, shows that today's young students repeatedly prove to be a mixture of groups with various interests, motives, and behaviors, and never a single generational cohort with common characteristics.…”