week 8

In the article for this week, Digital Natives with a Cause?, Nishant Shah and Sunil Abraham discuss this idea of the term “digital native”. The typical “digital native” is kind of this category that is shed in a negative light. The population considered to be “digital natives” are people whose youth has been significantly governed and changed by the internet, so children born around the 1980s. This group of people is described to have poor interpersonal and social skills, self-centered, and ignorant. All these qualities they believe stem from the overuse of the internet. These are some of the main qualities that were highlighted in the article, however they are generalizing these.

I think these ideas really related to some of our discussion talks, and about how parents feel that their children are losing some of their qualities from overuse of the internet. I found a CNN article that describes just this, where it is directed to parents and discussing whether children who would be considered “Digital Natives” are using the internet too much and whether it is dangerous for their development.

CNN bring up the ideas that the teen years are a time for exploration and experimentation and that the internet might hinder that because it is so public, but it also describes how it could be useful if used in the right way.

I feel that the internet and youth has this negative light around it, and this idea almost that children who use it too early are ending up later in life to be more “robotic” in a sense. But we still have yet to see the “Digital Natives” really grow into adults, and whether any of these hypothesis are true. I feel like these concerns will remain to stay until the “Digital Natives” generation has grown into their mid-20s and people can see really what “effects” the internet has had on youth. http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/21/opinion/clinton-steyer-internet-kids/

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