What influence do the Digital Media have on the wired kids?

I would like to present two opposing views as to the influence the electronic media might have on the Digital Born children. One view formulated in the eighties, is that of Neil Postman, an American philosopher. Postman deals mainly with the children of TV. [14]

Postman is wary of the new technologies. He fears that by adopting them too quickly we bring about the disappearance of childhood and destroy learning and logical-sequential thinking habits, structure and order.

The contrasting view is that of Don Tapscott, who comes from the business world. Tapscottís view deals mainly with the children of the internet [15]. Tapscott believes that a new better order is emerging; he finds the Net children who master technology, to be inquisitive learners, responsible, tolerant and caring individuals.

Let's take a closer look at Postman:

According to Postman, the world of electronic communication is a world without values, books and order. This is especially true of the world in which television reigns. Postman's child is one who lost his childhood but never reached maturity. Postman describes a society in which children and adults watch the same movies and tele-romances (soap operas), listen to the same pop music, and play the same computer games.

The adults in such a society become more and more childish as they try to pursue the youth culture, whereas the children, to whom all the secrets of adulthood are revealed, especially violence and sex, become, seemingly, mature. Seemingly, because they are mature externally but not emotionally.

As the differentiating line between the child and the adult blurs, concepts that distinguish the adult from the child, such as independence and responsibility, become unclear too. Postman describes a society at risk, living in a sinking world without books, without order; a chaotic meaningless world.

In his writings Postman describes children who live in a "twilight zone" between illusion and reality. It is a world in which parents and teachers have lost much of their authority: Postman suggests that adults should gradually unfold the world of adulthood to their young ones. The content, the dosage and the timing should be determined by the adult, or else the very essence of childhood will disappear.

Another view of the New Child: Don Tapscott and the Net Generation

Postman places television at the center of our childrenís life, and blames TV for many of the illnesses of today's youngsters. Unlike Postman, Don Tapscott thinks of the new child as the computer-and-Internet child. Tapscott points out that whereas the TV child maybe passive, computer-and-Internet children are active and creative.
In his book Growing up Digital Tapscott describes the highly connected N-Geners: These youngsters love to learn. They are curious, inquisitive, studious and responsible. Tapscott's children tend to learn in unorthodox ways. These high-tech children don't necessarily study the curricula written by adults. They take responsibility over themselves and their learning, are full of initiative, and are willing to give of their knowledge to others. According to Tapscott these digital children are caring, outspoken and aspire to improve reality.

The Internet has become the new country of immigration. From different parts of the globe, people are coming to the new land of unlimited possibilities in which sound, music; picture, animation and text are intertwined. In lands of immigration, the young ones are the first to integrate in the new society and to speak its language. Very often they teach their parents and even grandparents the language and customs of the new land. [16]

This is what is happening nowadays, as the highly-connected children build sites and teach older generations the language of the high-tech.

Tapscott characterizes the N-Geners as tolerant, inquisitive and eager to learn. The Oracle company harnessed this inquisitive element, to the building of subject-matter-oriented Internet sites. The company initiated a competition, geared to schoolchildren, on Internet site-building. Students have constructed more than 5,000 such sites for students, teachers and Netizens [17]— citizens of the net.

The following site — Butterflies — On the Wings of Freedom, [18] could serve as an example for the scholarly and humane work done by participants in Thinkquest.

The site was built by three students: from San Diego, California, from Aichwald, Germany and from Hongkong. In this site, the three Thinkquest participants teach about butterflies, but they also call on youngsters to reach out to other youngsters; they are urged to write poetry, to learn science and to learn from butterflies using bionics ie; innovations based upon nature.

We are told that "Researchers examine the surface of butterflies' wings as possible model for future computer chips.... Copying the scalesí structure, researchers might be able to solve the problem of heat produced by the components of a computer chip."

The N-Geners are a caring and sharing generation. They often create new Internet sites for the common good. Jason Fernandez, then 15, from Mumbai in India built such a site. [19] Jason's site gives support to children with learning disabilities and their parents and teachers. The site (in ten languages!) contains thorough and valuable information on various types of learning disabilities.

When I uploaded my article on Children of the Information Age on the Internet, Jason got in touch with me via e mail. This alone might indicate the busy life and the involvement of the youngsters on the net. I asked Jason what prompted him to build his site. He said that he learnt from the founder of Apple about the power of the individual and that the site he, Jason, built is a manifestation of his own individual power.

Three youngsters with physical disabilities set up a site for other young people suffering from physical problems. [20]

This is how they explain why they took up this endeavor upon themselves:

We set this web site up for three reasons:

1. We feel the information available for young people with disabilities at the moment is too often written from an adult's perspective
2. Information tends to be based around one region rather than covering the country
3. The information available assumes that every young person with a disability has a similar background

Another characteristic of the young N-Geners is their emotional openness. There is nothing which is secret anymore, everything is read, everything discussed, everything said. Postman would probably see this element as an indicator of the disappearance of childhood as secrets are divulged and children share and gather unscreened information on the internet quite often without the mediating voice of the adult to guide them.

In the Herzlia High school in Tel Aviv, Israel, as in other high schools in various countries, a group of trained youngsters 15-18 listen and give advice to other youngsters in distress. [21] The problems they counsel others on range from relationship to drugs, alcohol, family problems, sexual identity and more. These youngsters are not only direct and outspoken, but they are also well informed and involved in political issues.

A few years ago, John Katz, wrote an article named: "The Birth of the Digital Nation" in Wired magazine. [22] Research was conducted in light of Katz's article and its findings showed that the more digital a person is, the more informed of political issues he/she is, more critical of what he/she reads and hears on the media, more tolerant of others.

Tapscott claims that the N-Geners are independent thinkers who are critical of manipulations. They strongly believe that much of what they hear on radio or watch on television is manipulated by the big companies, whereas much of what is written and displayed on the Net is created by ordinary people who would like to share their world and knowledge with others. The N-Geners use the Net to express their opinions, independence and their protests against big companies and the controlling establishment.

The new technologies also assist us in becoming technically independent. Many of the professions held in the past solely in the hands of adults, such as printing, publishing, graphic design and others, are now at the tip of the fingers of youngsters and anyone else possessing computer skills and the ability to build Websites.

The new land, the Internet, is a mega-publishing house. Unlike traditional publishing houses where a chosen group of people decides whether a poem, a story, an essay or an article are fit to print, or a work of art fit to display, on the Net such decisions are usually not made. Everyone, regardless of age, gender or education can publish their work. The children of the Net eagerly upload their ideas and works to the Internet.

These independent, active, innovative youngsters are about to change, according to Tapscott, our ways of learning and working and our social structure.

Computer and Internet activities outside the Net

The children of the computer and the Internet are active offline as well. They are willing to give from their vast knowledge in computers to others in face-to-face meetings.

For the first time in history, children have mastered knowledge much needed by adults. Therefore it is only natural to train these "new masters" in imparting with their knowledge and in teaching others. The new era is also an era of role reversal. In 1999 the Bar Lev Junior High in Kfar Sava, initiated a computer trustees education program. One evening a week, students tutor their teachers at computer and Internet skills. These are simultaneously learners and teachers. In addition, they also serve as information officers during classes, assisting teachers in searching for sites most appropriate to the subject matter being taught, and solving computer and Internet problems. These youngsters also serve as a telephone help desk in the afternoon and give computer support to the public via the telephone. In some schools, the computer-and-Internet children tutor other children, both intra-school and inter-school, in the computer and Internet skills. [23]

Computer usage and mastery is mainly in the hands of the young generation, whose status in society has undergone much change with the introduction of the new technologies. The technological revolution, so it seems, has passed over the older members in our society. Whereas the seniors sometimes seem to be living in a waste land as far as technology is concerned, the young ones seem to be born holding the "mouse cord" in their hands. They speak high-tech as their mother tongue and their natural environment is a technological one.
In this situation, it is appropriate to have a meeting between the two polar groups, the young speakers of high-tech and the much older ones for whom the world of computer and the Internet is an unknown land . In this meeting, between the young and the old, the young ones teach the language of the new country, the land of technology, to the old ones.

For the last six years I have been implementing a program I initiated and started: The Intergenerational Program: Preserving Heritage in a Technological Environment [24]. In this program young students, grades 5-11, tutor senior citizens at computer and Internet skills and learn from their older students, a chapter in the latter's personal history. Together they write a digital version of the story, scan pictures, albums, and documents, and search for information on the Net as well as in other sources.

There is a saying that when an old person dies an entire library is set on fire. In the intergenerational program we preserve whole libraries, treasured in the minds of the elderly, by the means of the new technologies.

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References:

[14] Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood, NY:Vintage Books,1994
[15] Don Tapscott , Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1998
[16] Roni Aviram, in Ha-Hinuch Bemivhan Hazman, Tel-Aviv: 1997 (in Hebrew)]
[17] http://www.thinkquest.org/library/index.html
[18] http://library.thinkquest.org/C002251/index.shtml
[19] http://www.perceptivei.com/jason/jason2/LDkids/index2.htm
[20] http://www.wheelg2life.info/who.htm
[21] http://www.gymnasia.co.il/info_services.asp
[22] http://www.wired.com/wired/5/04/netizen.html
[23] Edna Aphek, Learning and Growing by Giving: Children as Agents of the ICT, http://www.developingteachers.com/articles_tchtraining/childproj1_edna.htm
[24] Edna Aphek, Preserving Culture in a Technological Environment,
http://www.techknowlogia.org/March 2003

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