Digital Natives, Immigrants, Pioneers and Citizens

The term ‘digital native’ is widely used to describe members of the generations that have grown up using digital technology. Its less popular corollary, the ‘digital immigrant’, applied to those of us who encountered modern digital technology only later in life, is a misleading term on at least two levels. If we are immigrants to the place that is digital, then that place is one of very few where immigrants have it easier than the native population. A more appropriate term might be ‘digital pioneers’; partly because it would recognise that we digital pioneers have done what human pioneers everywhere have tended to do: made a bit of a mess for future generations to deal with. As proclaimed and encapsulated in John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (which may also have coined the native/immigrant dichotomy), my generation discovered a world of limitless possibilities that inspired many of us with great optimism. In colonising this space, we’ve simultaneously domesticated it, using it to take capitalism to its next phase, and filled it with dangers.

Many adults of this generation have recognised the problems that we’re handing down to the ‘digital natives’ and are attempting to make amends by telling a new set of stories about digital technology and the Internet to children and young people. These stories are often warnings: the internet is dangerous, risky and likely to damage your health. Our vocabulary also suggests that it’s a domain that is somehow distinct from everyday lived reality, thus the language of ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ to refer respectively to digital and physical, and indeed, the language of ‘natives’ and ‘immigrants’. On the other hand, children and young people can clearly see from our actions both how highly adults value digital technology and how thoroughly the digital and physical are interwoven in our lives.

From this context emerges the language and discourse of ‘digital citizenship’. Although the concept is widely contested, a number of frameworks have been created to elaborate it. These frameworks often focus on damage limitation, and are strangely disconnected from wider concepts of citizenship and their grounding in political philosophy, often instead positing the digital domain as a distinct place and focusing on mastery of technology in its own right. The DQ Institute, which offers one of the most comprehensive and detailed frameworks, includes digital citizenship within its useful wider framework of ‘Digital Intelligence’, defining it as ‘the ability to use digital technology and media in safe, responsible, and ethical ways’. This seemed to us useful as far as it goes, but, like other frameworks and definitions it fails to ground digital citizenship within a wider concept of the citizen.

Digital Scouting

Earlier this year, I led a piece of research for the Scouts, funded by Nominet, with the aim of refreshing the Scouts’ Digital Citizen badge, and the learning outcomes, requirements and activities that comprise it (the full report is available here). The Scout Association (commonly known as the Scouts) is the UK branch of the worldwide scouting movement, with a mission “to actively engage and support young people in their personal development, empowering them to make a positive contribution to society.” The Scouts work with 474,000 members around the country, aged between 6–18. Although they typically emphasise physical and outdoor activities, in recent years the Scouts have recognised that if they wish to support young people’s thriving in the round, engagement with digital needs to be part of that picture. They therefore offer badges to support and recognise positive engagement with digital: Digital Maker and Digital Citizen.

We examined the available frameworks for thinking about digital citizenship, and heard from a range of experts on their suggestions for how the Scouts could adapt and refresh these concepts and apply them in a scouting context, where the focus is on acquiring skills for life within a theory of change concerned with social cohesion and mobility, citizenship and civic participation (see page 10 of Skills for Life 2018–23). The experts we talked to included people working in academia, consultancies, charities and technology companies whose work all touch in one way or another on the relationship between young people, technology and civic participation. The experts also included adult scout volunteers and, most importantly, Scouts themselves, who we got to know through a series of workshops.

One session that had a particular impact on us was meeting a group of so called ‘Explorer Scouts’. This group of 14 to 18-year-olds had clearly heard and absorbed a series of negative messages about the effects of digital technology, and approached it with a strong awareness of its limitations and dangers. Many of the comments we heard from this group also suggested both that the Internet was an arena in which opportunities to gain money and fame were available to the lucky few, and that too many of its niches were already occupied. We heard little to suggest that these young people saw the internet as offering tools to make or reinforce meaningful connections or discover new ideas.

Defining digital citizenship in a Scouting context

Our report proposed to the Scouts a definition and a set of learning outcomes for digital citizenship. Both attempt to relate digital citizenship to the wider context of citizenship — “citizenship-first” rather than “digital-first”, as one of our interviewees put it — and its relationship to society and place, ultimately promoting an ambitious concept of digital technology as “the toolkit with which [children and young people] can change the world”, in the words of another.

Building on the DQ Institute’s definition, we defined digital citizenship as:

The safe, responsible and ethical use of digital technology to exercise rights, support individual thriving, improve the lives of others and take positive social action in local, national and international communities.

And we proposed a set of learning outcomes tailored to the different Scouting levels (Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and Explorer Scouts) grouped around five overall themes that between them balance individual and societal benefits:

• Health and wellbeing
• Digital life skills
• Critical thinking
• Positive interaction
• Social action

Of course, there is no single answer to improving our and our children’s digital lives. There is no denying the importance of ensuring that children should be safe online. The risks and dangers are genuine and this remains a critically important goal. Nor do our proposals gainsay the value of campaigning approaches to ensuring that governments and corporations take responsibility for improving the health of the digital environment through regulation and reform. Initiatives such as 5Rights or the work of Doteveryone aim at ensuring that young people should have rights as well as responsibilities as digital citizens. By empowering young people with more positive frameworks and narratives about their agency as digital citizens, we also believe that they are more likely to claim these rights.

The Scouts are very well placed to be able to make a much-needed positive contribution to the practical development of the skills of the next generation of digital citizens. It’s clear there are real challenges to such an agenda, whether because of entrenched negative attitudes on the part of some children and young people, or simply the numerous logistical implications of implementing such a programme in a volunteer-led organisation. But the Scouts look set to play a uniquely constructive part in supporting digital pioneers and natives alike, as we work together to figure out how to be citizens.