Digital Natives Analysis

The premise of the book goes into further detail concerning the digital era that we are living in today. Sadly the author explains that the digital culture does not open the minds of young adults to the

In her book, It's Complicated, Danah Boyd expresses her views on modern-day social media and the modern-day teenager's reliability with it. The book is comprised of 8 enlightening categories: identity, privacy, addiction, danger, bullying, inequality, literacy, and searching for a public of their own. Throughout the book, Boyd provides data, true stories, and factual conversations to help support her main claim: social media has taken over our youth.

The general thesis of this book is “How the digital age stupefies young Americans and jeopardizes our future,” which happens to be the subtitle of this book. In the first chapter, Knowledge Deficits, the author talks about how the teens in the 20th century have the same or even lower education level as teens 30 years ago. Bauerlein goes on and talks about how the government is spending more for education compared to 30 years ago. In the second chapter, The New Bibliophobes, the author argues that teens are reading less books and their literary skills are not improving as fast because they are more interested in digital and pop culture. In the third chapter, Screen Time, lots of studies and surveys prove that teens are spending more time playing video games and socializing with each other online than studying. In chapter four, Online Learning And Non-Learning, the author talks about how teens are abusing the technology and pretending to use it for educational purposes, but in reality, the are using it for entertainment. In chapter five, The Betrayal Of The Mentors, the author explains if all teen follow this pathway they will utterly destroy their future by not making suitable for having a degree, job and poetically family.

In the text ‘The dumbest Generation: How The Digital Age Stupifies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future’ written by English professor Mark Bauerline at Emory University, he continually emphasizes the implication that the millennial generation has intellectual deficiencies because of their dependency on social media and technology. One of his most relevant theories is that the use of video games and the integration of technology into the classroom has negative impacts on a student’s academic performance because “It conditions the minds against quiet, concerted study, against imagination unassisted by visuals, against linear, sequential analysis of texts, against an idle afternoon with a detective story and nothing else” (Bauerline 95).

According to multiple studies, adults and teens spend more hours using technology than they do asleep. On average, adults spend 8 hours and 40 minutes per day using laptops, phones, and other electronics. On the other hand, teens spend about 9 hours using various forms of media. Mark Bauerlein, a social critic, professor, and author of The Dumbest Generation claims the under thirty generation is the “dumbest” generation in modern history due to technology. He says there are two differences between past generations and the under thirty generation, general knowledge has gone down and reading habits have vanished. The under-thirty generation is the dumbest because people squander the opportunities technology provides, which proves having an abundance of resources doesn’t assure success.

In this article, Prensky starts by stating obvious differences between this generation, and the ones that precede it. Today, "Digital Natives" or another popular term "Millennials" lives are proof of the impact of technology. They watch more TV, play more video games, and have mastered the art of multitasking constantly being surrounded by gizmos and gadgets. The author describes

With such a large percentage of teenagers involved with using the internet and social media platforms, they truly do have the world at their fingertips. It is true that this generation does not depend on fetching water, nor do the majority have to walk miles to school or other daily, laborious tasks. The advancement of technology has made modern American life extremely convenient. However, while our technology is improving, other things such as education and image, haunt this developing age group in a way previous generations never

Distinctions between “digital immigrants” and “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001a; Prensky, 2001b) have been frequently referenced over the past decade. Much has been written about digital native students as a part of the Net generation (Tapscott, 1998; Tapscott, 2008) or as Millennials (Howe & Strauss, 2000), which generally includes learners “born in the 1980s and later” (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005, p. 1.2). However, little work fully considers the impact of digital immigrant discourse as it appears within the field of adult learning and continuing education. Indeed, such discussion seems increasingly necessary given the growing body of recent evidence calling into question such popular, binary notions characterizing youth as ubiquitously tech

To demand a new way of teaching and learning involving technology. (Thomas, 2011, p. 4) These popular claims within the seminal literature on digital natives (for example, that digital natives possess a sophisticated set of ICT [Information and Communication Technologies] knowledge and skills or that they have different learning styles or preferences) are largely unsupported by research evidence (Bennett, Maton, & Kirvan, 2008, p. 777). However, using these claims, enthusiasts’ present digital natives as a part of a utopian vision of technology tied to an exoticized picture of liberated young people (Buckingham, 2011). Despite slight distinctions, the terms digital native, the Net generation, and Millennials are used interchangeably (Jones et al., 2010, p. 723). Digital immigrants are characterized as individuals born before 1980 who knew an analogueonly world and still rely on analogue forms of interaction. For digital immigrants, the communication changes happening via the introduction of digital technologies are supposedly learned and relearned, instead of easily becoming second nature (Palfrey and Gasser, 2008, p. 4). Problems are often identified not with the digital natives but rather with older generations of non-natives who display their “digital immigrant accent” (Prensky, 2001a, p. 3) when using new technologies. In this way, digital immigrants are portrayed as being tied to older media, unable to catch up (Buckingham, 2011), therefore embodying the antithesis

Kids in Today’s Society In the article “What’s the Matter with Kids Today?” Amy Goldwasser believes that the internet is a positive tool in the youth’s lives today. Unlike the older generation that thinks that the internet is just taking time away from them and making them very distracted from their work and school. As an 88-year-old in the article states,” Kids today- were telling you! - don’t read, don’t write, and don’t care about anything farther in front of them than their iPods.”

Goldwasser makes a great point by stating, “According to the article “What’s the Matter with the Kids Today?” many adults believe that young minds are being taken over by technology. Goldwasser believes that instead, they are more involved and educated as a result of social media, texting, and using the internet to learn. She uses Common Core surveys that state that young people are in “stunning ignorance of history and literature” as well as Doris Lessing’s comments on the decrease of youth’s interest in books in her Nobel prize speech (635). Goldwasser uses these examples to create her argument that if parents better understood technology, teenagers would not be viewed as addicted to

A. (2013). iGeneration: The Social Cognitive Effects of Digital Technology on Teenagers (Doctoral dissertation, Dominican University of CaliforniA). Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED543278

Many people have explored the effects of digital media on young people to see if it does in fact affect their level of intelligence. Mark Bauerlein is an English professor and researcher at Emory University. His data showed, "Young Americans have much more access and education than

2001.In his article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” Prensky defined ‘digital natives’ as young people who grew up surrounded by and using computers, cell phones and other tools of the digital age. Prensky claims that a digital environment dramatically changes the way that young people think and process information, it possibly even changes their brain structures. Prensky contrast ‘digital natives’ to ‘digital immigrants’. Digital immigrants are people who were born before widespread use of digital technology and who adopted it to some extent later in life. Prensky states that all people born after 1980 are ‘digital

In today’s world it is a requirement to be digitally literate in order to be able to function in a capacity that enables one to be more successful whether it is at home, school, at our jobs or even looking for a job. Over the last few decades our environment has evolved into a digital environment. Being or becoming digitally literate is essential in being successful in this digital environment. Almost everything we do today requires some sort of digital knowledge or literacy. From surfing the internet to searching for a job to being able to perform our jobs, we are required to have some sort of digital