Digital Orphans, Digital Exiles and Digital Heirs
DIGITAL ORPHANS,EXILES AND HEIRS
A Digital Orphan is someone who has grown up with the access to a great deal of technology, but they tend to have a lack of guidance. The lack of guidance is coming from their parents who aren’t willing to have face to face discussions with their children about what information they are absorbing from using tech. By children developing like this and parents allowing it to happen, long term issues may arise and it can lead to difficulties with their interpersonal skills.
A Digital Exile is someone who has been raised with minimal technology and opposite repercussions may occur from this. A parent may think they are protecting their child by limiting their access to the tech world, but long term the consequences see their child struggling to balance their lives and tech once introduced to it. This may also cause issues for the exiles as they don’t have the social skills with tech and they could fall into trouble with various online forms.
A Digital Heir is someone who has a great understanding of tech and a good balance with their lives between tech and the real world. A Digital Heir is someone who has the skills to build and modify a website, films, photo’s etc and they can bring a different approach into their professional careers. Â
Personally, for myself once I have children I would like to think that I would enable my children to have access to the tech world, but I must be consistent with my monitoring of how they are using the internet, allow time to have discussions about what they are learning and have a balance between the tech world and the real world.
Studying to be a teacher and working within schools now, I like seeing technology used as it has a different approach to learning and it can expand what we teach to our future generations. Again, a balance must be put into place with our students, and allowing for discussion with them whilst using tech and after using tech.
Reference
Samuel, A. (2017). Opinion: Forget “digital natives.” Here’s how kids are really using the Internet. ideas.ted.com. Retrieved 13 October 2017, from https://ideas.ted.com/opinion-forget-digital-natives-heres-how-kids-are-really-using-the-internet/
