Recently, I was having a debate with our oldest child about technology. This child believes that I am a bit of an overbearing dinosaur when it comes to our connected experiences. To a degree, they are correct. We have rules about when our children can get their first phone and what they can download on to it. We occasionally check browser history and limit their daily screen time. I also prefer Microsoft products to Google tools, and I am more comfortable using a PC than a Mac. However, although our children are ‘digital natives‘ (a term coined by Marc Prensky to describe those born into an innate new culture of technology), that does not mean that they understand the technology – or its features, uses, and possibilities – with which they are so readily interacting.
One glaring area of misunderstanding is around data collection and personal privacy. A 2019 report from the Pew Research Center tells how many Americans are not diligent about paying attention to the privacy policies and terms of service they regularly encounter. Fewer than 10% of Pew’s respondents read a company’s privacy policy before agreeing to it. Two-thirds of those that do read the policies say they understand very little or nothing at all about the laws and regulations that are currently in place to protect their data privacy. So if few adults understand what’s being collected and shared about them, there is little chance that our children do.
My spouse has been a data analyst for over 20 years, collecting and analyzing personal data from a wide variety of online sources. He is well versed in knowing what types of information are available on each of us. I have taught information policy and mediated communication courses during my time as a university professor. In those classes, we examined the various state and federal policies related to online privacy and discussed how they are woefully behind current technologies. Together, we are well aware of the regulations and uses around data privacy and are quite cautious about what information we share online and with whom. The difficulty is that students rarely have a choice about ‘opting in’ to a technology, and, as a result, an astonishing amount of data is being collected about them.
The Learning Innovation Lab at Duke University described three other ways in which students are not the technology savants they claim to be:
- Although today’s students have used the Internet to find information for many years, they often do not have the online research skills needed to use and evaluate Internet sources effectively.
- Digital natives are not better at multitasking than anyone born before cell phones were ubiquitous. (Of course, my oldest would passionately refute this finding.)
- Students do not innately understand all educational apps. Being a ‘digital native’ does not mean they are automatically a ‘technology expert.’
So while digital natives can teach ‘digital immigrants‘ (a Marc Prensky term describing those who have lived in the analogue age and immigrated to the digital world) about the availability of new technologies, the older crowd can teach the younger ones about the broader implications of the technologies with which they are interacting. And I am okay with that.
