FAMILY APPRENTICESHIP FOR THE ORANGE ECONOMY
Are We Digital Natives Yet?
Deciphering the digital ethnography of today’s teens
“Not only are we digital immigrants, we are also media dinosaurs.”
~ Ian Lamont
In his seminal 2001 article, the renowned education consultant Marc Prensky popularized the term digital native, which he used to describe “children raised in a digital, media-saturated world, requir[ing] a media-rich learning environment to hold their attention”.
In his acclaimed 2006 book titled “Don’t Bother Me Mom — I’m Learning!”, he illuminated on this new demography further. In the book he noted that:
“[t]oday’s average college grads have spent fewer than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but often more than 10,000 hours playing video games, another 10,000 on their cell phones, and more than 20,000 watching TV.”
As an interesting aside, according to Malcolm Gladwell’s framework in his acclaimed book, Blink, by spending at least 10,000 hours on three distinct areas of activity, those college grads definitely qualify as masters at gaming, texting and content consumption!
But back to the main topic, in a study conducted by pwc for Super Awesome, the self-acclaimed world’s largest kids media platform, kids today “are moving away from obsession with tangible objects like squishies, and directing their attention to the digital”.
Wait…what! I thought they were already digital natives. And if so, how come they are only just moving “to the digital” in 2019?
According to Super Awesome’s survey of the under-13s on their network, PopJam, trending items as at July 2019 were:
- Fortnite — digital
- TikTok — digital
- Slime — IRL
- Music — because kids, I’ll give this to digital
- Hit the Woah — what’s that?! digital
- Scrunchies — IRL
- PopJam — digital
- Unicorns — errr…
- Memes — digital
- Crop tops — IRL
Overwhelming digital, no doubt. But still a strong showing from IRL objects.
My daughter is largely a digital creator, drawing and animating using her drawing tablet. Yet she still loves the feel of drawing with pencil on paper. And she’s a big slime aficionado.
So I don’t think there is quite that sharp a dichotomy for our kids between digital worlds and IRL. I think they are more high-frequency travelers between both worlds.
Augmented Reality anyone?
Update (25 Sep 2021): PlayWorx is currently on sabbatical.
At present, I am blogging exclusively at The Global Careerist.
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I do this by writing a Medium publication, speaking at events and cooking up ingenious ways to spread the PlayWorx Method message of emphasizing nurturing of bold imagination and building of sustained creative capital during the t(w)eens years.
If you are a parent of a t(w)een, I invite you to subscribe to my weekly PlayWorx Insights email and join other perceptive parents who are already benefiting from this ‘front-side seat’ into another way to grow t(w)eens!
