There’s always a lot of controversy whenever you start describing the social and online behaviours that characterise the ‘Net Gen’: Are they critically engaging with what they’re doing? Are they really able to keep a track of all that info that’s coming at them? What about online predators? Are the kids getting enough fresh air? Things get even hairier if you use the term ‘Digital Native’ (for some reason ‘Net Gen’ is less controversial than is ‘Digital Native’): There are lots of people born before the Net Gen who are perfectly at home in cyberspace; not all youngsters are ‘natives’ to this environment, anyway; this is all simplifying things too much.
I don’t have any real qualms over the terms used, as long as we recognise that when we’re using them we’re making generalisations and probably being ever-so-slightly reductionist. There is room for generalisation in anything — that, after all, is how analysis occurs: we interrogate material, look for patterns, and then organise it so that we can eventually create new meaning for ourselves.
But the question is nevertheless raised: How much are we describing behaviours that are peculiar to a specific age group, and how much are we describing the behaviours of anyone who spends a lot of time online? The CIBER team at University College London have gone some way to beginning to answer this question (see my previous post), but the fact remains that for most teachers their new learners will be young people, and, as such, the descriptions still hold good.
