Another Misread of the “Digital Native” Idea

I’ve been wanting to write a long blog post on the idea of the “digital native” for a while now. This short post will have to do for now…

A new study from the Open University that “explodes” the “myth of the ‘digital native'” has two big problems. One is that all the participants are Open University students. Since the Open University is an online institution, that means the sample is at least a little biased toward those comfortable enough with technology to attend an online institution.

The bigger problem, however, is this: The study misses what I see as the key element in the idea of the “digital native,” that those who spend their formative years using technology come to think at least a little bit differently. Might a 20-year-old think about privacy differently than a 45-year-old because of the younger person’s use of Facebook? Might a 20-year-old expect a different kind of feedback on his or her work than a 45-year-old because of the younger person’s video game playing experience?

The Open University study found no gap between younger and older students in the use of technology or in attitudes about technology. But the study didn’t seem to examine how younger and older students might tend to have different ways of thinking because of their differing experiences with technology. The questions they asked about approaches to studying might have gone in this direction, but it’s not clear from this article. The study certainly seemed to focus on students’ use of and attitudes toward technology.

This is a common belief about the idea of the “digital native,” that it’s about younger students’ comfort with technology, skill with technology, or attitudes about technology. Those elements are in Marc Prensky’s original use of the “digital native” term, but there’s also this piece about coming to think differently about the world because of technology use. That, to me, is the most interesting part of the hypothesis and the one most relevant to teaching. But it’s the piece that many people overlook in their attempts to debunk the “digital native” idea.

For a few more examples of how “digital natives” might think just a bit differently, see my tongue-in-cheek “review” of the book as a device.

Image: “Baby Sees the iPad Magic,” Steve Paine, Flickr (CC). Hat tip to Mike Caulfield for the article on the Open University story.

5 Responses to "Another Misread of the “Digital Native” Idea"

Jim says:

August 22, 2011 at 10:46 am

Derek, I agree that “coming to think differently about the world because of technology use” is key. I don’t agree that digital native debunkers overlook this … I think what they point out is very much in line with the OU study – that this change in thinking due to tech use is independent of age. The DN debunkers seek to challenge the assumption that young = digital native = extensive experiences with technology that have changed thinking about the world. They point out there are plenty of young people who may not have had those technology experiences, or that their experiences may not have changed their thinking in ways that (especially academics) might assume. They also point out that older people who have extensive tech experiences may exhibit characteristics that some might want to reserve for their perception of “digital natives”.

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derekbruff says:

August 22, 2011 at 2:02 pm

Most DN “debunking” I read is more along the lines of this article in today’s Inside Higher Ed:

“I think it really exploded this myth of the ‘digital native,'” Asher said. “Just because you’ve grown up searching things in Google doesn’t mean you know how to use Google as a good research tool.”

The idea being debunked here is that those who frequently use technology (like search) really understand and can think critically about that technology. I don’t find that idea credible, and the ERIAL study described in the IHE piece provides yet more evidence that it’s not true. However, this idea wasn’t part of Marc Prensky’s original “digital native” concept as I understand it, which is why I object to the claim that studies like the ERIAL study “debunk” the “digital native” claim.

The idea that you’ve identified, Jim, that young = digital something and old = digital something else, is also something I see contested, but I think that’s less about misunderstanding the “digital native” concept than it is about fuzzy statistics. In medical trials, when we say that drug X is “more effective” than drug Y, we don’t mean that every use of drug X is better than every use of drug Y. Instead, we mean that there’s a statistically significant difference in the average results for drugs X and Y. For some individuals, drug Y might work better than drug X, but over the entire sample, drug X performs better than drug Y.

That’s my take on the age aspects of the “digital native” idea. Yes, you can find young people who have had very little access to technology and don’t think in ways that are influenced by tech use. And you’ll find older people with lots of experience using technology whose ways of thinking have been shaped by that use. But that doesn’t preclude a claim that younger people, on average, think differently because of their tech use than older people.

This statistical view of “digital natives” has important consequences for teaching: Even if, on average, the students in a given class are digitally-influenced in some way, it’s not that every student in digitally-influenced in the exact same way. Individual results may vary, as they say.

The value I see in the “digital native” idea is that it reminds us that our students might not think in the same ways we do and suggests some of those ways. I know that not everyone interprets the “digital native” idea in this way (often because they miss the “ways of thinking” aspect of the idea), but for me, it’s another way to be a student-centered teacher.

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Jim says:

August 23, 2011 at 12:36 pm

Derek, I agree with all you’ve said. I think the “digital native” debunking/backlash is aimed at (1) the techno-hypesters that took the concept and turned it into a mandate to use more technology because students are now wired differently and they need that, or (2) the techno-naive that seemed to have an understanding that because students now are digital natives, you can just assume that students will do a great job of using technology in the learning process. Both are perhaps caricatures to some extent, but the point is that there were/are lots of folks that turned the “digital native” concept into something that lacked nuance and thus did a disservice to teaching and learning.

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Kwandell Peterson says:

August 24, 2011 at 6:29 pm

There’s also a small but vocal contingent of humanities professors who will point out that the analogy to “natives” has problematic colonialist overtones.

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derekbruff says:

August 24, 2011 at 7:02 pm

Thanks for adding that, Kwandell. That’s absolutely true. The term “native speaker” doesn’t have those same overtones, as far as I know, and it’s the language aspect of the native / immigrant metaphor that’s most relevant. But “native speaker of things digital” and “non-native speaker of things digital” isn’t exactly elegant.

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