Reprinted with permission from Born Digital by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser (Perseus Books, 2008).
Digital Natives are certainly experimenting with multiple identities. Sometimes, they are recreating or amplifying aspects of their real-space identities when they go online. In other instances, they are experimenting online with who they are, trying on roles and looks and relationships that they might never dare to try on in “real space.”
If the Digital Native has created multiple identities, those identities might be connected to create a much fuller picture of the individual than was possible before, spanning a greater period of time. Because of the use of digital technologies over the years, the result is more than a snapshot; instead it is more of a record of the individual’s life that continues to accumulate over time. The version of the identity of a Digital Native that a given onlooker sees may depend a lot on how the onlooker accesses this morphing, sprawling identity.
The biggest cause for concern is not the changes in identity themselves or even the habits of Digital Natives. Digital Natives often have the skills to manage their identities reasonably well in this shifting, hybrid environment. … Much of the time, the Digital Natives are shaping the changing nature of identity, and how others come to perceive them, through their own actions. So the Digital Natives—the savvy users—are not in great danger. The people we should worry about instead are those users who fall on the other side of the participation gap: young people growing up in the digital age who do not have the digital literacy skills to control their identities.
Digital technology gives everyone the means to express themselves, and it empowers them to speak—and to be heard by others, including those in power—in ways that previous generations could only have imagined. Creators no longer need to rely on the old gatekeepers like professional agencies, editorial boards, and producers. … What’s different about Digital Natives, compared to older Internet users who are participating in this creative revolution, is that they take the breakdown of the old hierarchy for granted.
The increasing power and attractiveness of the Internet for purposes like escape and self-expression is part of the problem for some young people. The Internet’s interactive quality leads some Digital Natives to prefer their “second life” to their first.
Broadly defined, information overload occurs when the amount of information that is available exceeds a person’s ability to process it (he or she is “receiving too much information”). It’s no surprise to anyone who spends time online that the explosion of the Internet dramatically increased the possibility of overload, and in recent years the problem has become both widespread and more recognized.
The unprecedented amount of digital information and the means of coping with it may have a negative impact on Digital Natives’ relationships. As a general matter, survey data suggest that those who have more interactions online tend to have more intense face-to-face interactions than those who do not engage in so much online interaction. However, kids who spend a large amount of time on their Sidekicks, or instant messaging with friends, can strain social relations, particularly in families. The lure of digital communications can undercut family time.
One of the primary reasons to be concerned about too much information being accessible to young people is the possibility of negative effects on decision-making. An individual’s ability to make adequate decisions heavily depends on the amount of information that person is exposed to. Life experience suggests that more information increases the overall quality of decisions. If a decision-maker gets too little information, he or she can’t see the full picture and runs the risk of making a decision without having taken important information into account. But the positive correlation between the amount of information and the quality of decision-making has limitations. At some point, additional information cannot be processed and integrated. In fact, the extra information may result in information overload, with consequences that include confusion, frustration, panic, or even paralysis.
Just because Digital Natives don’t learn things in the same way that their grandparents did does not mean that the way that they are learning is not as effective. There is no evidence to suggest that they are learning less than their grandparents did, or that they are more superficial in their learning. In fact, Digital Natives are quite sophisticated in the ways that they gather information. The people to be worried about are those who are growing up in a digital age but who are not learning these sophisticated information-gathering and information-processing skills, or creating things of their own based on what they learn and sharing it with others.
There are no hard data to suggest that Digital Natives are smarter than anyone who came before them. Neither is there any sign that kids are dumber, or in any way less promising, than previous generations of kids. Digital Natives are doing the same things their parents did with information, just in different ways. While they may not be learning the same things through the same processes, it’s not the case that Digital Natives are interacting less with information. They are simply coping with more information, and that information comes to their attention in new ways—offering new possibilities for engagement.
Some parents and teachers worry, too, about Digital Natives having shorter attention spans than children in previous decades. There are real issues brewing here. Many kids do read shorter works. They are migrating from things like extended format magazines and books to the Web. On the Web, short formats ordinarily work better than long formats, whether in text, audio, or video. By and large, it is a sound-bite culture. Ditto for text messaging, instant messaging, and even e-mailing.