Digital Native Response

After reading Spiegel's revisit to Presnky's "digital native" article, Spiegel provides some necessary pushback to the ideologies of Presnky. In my interpretation, a portion of this can be attributed to the timing of the initial article and the timing of the revisit. Spiegel mentions reading the article in 2002, a year after it was published in 2001; 20 years prior to the revisit that we are discussing today. With that change in time, language such as "native" and "immigrant" can become outdated and leave room for misinterpretation. These 2 terms also put a hyperfocus and false confidence in the "native" to be an expert and that there is not much to be learned from the "immigrant" but more to teach. 

I really was compelled by the mention of Danah Boyd's research that found that youth are not tied to their phones because they love gadgets, but more so the private community and safe space they are able to comfortably inhibit through their phones and digital spaces. This is especially eye-opening for me as someone who feels like I was able to navigate my childhood as both a "native" to it but also an "immigrant" by the given terms. I owned video games, and had a walkman as a childhood, but also had parents who made me look information up in the encyclopedia anthology we had in our basement growing up. I think I was too the native to these things, but as Spiegel mentioned, I do not see my relationship to media or technology remotely close to the youth that I work with. I find myself too saying things like "No, in the real world" as opposed to things that may be on social media like comments under an Instagram post. The assumptions Boyd mentions of youth being assumed to understand all technology based on their ability to navigate social media platforms that are native to them is something I experienced first hand with my mother as technology developed throughout my youth. I found that challenging in my youth without understanding until now the reasons as to why it was assumed I would be able to navigate these devices. I feel as though the term Spiegel brings forward "digital socialites" are becoming more and more common amongst the youth and it is becoming a social regression for humans today. I have a nephew who just competed his sophomore year of college, and he rarely has ever approached a person of interest in person. A majority of his interaction is based on reactions to social media posts, comments, liking pictures back and forth ; and there is an element of interaction or "game" that is lost there. 

I personally, mentioned this in class but I feel like the best way to summarize if we were looking for a term would be digital navigators. We are all navigating through this digital world in our own ways, some with more expertise than others, some starting fresh from scratch, some that know nothing other than a world where AI will be prevalent in their digital experience. I think of it as the scale of pain at the hospital. And there may be more than 1 scale. Just because I am proficient in posting and navigating my social media algorithms, doesn't ensure me to be able to upload your pictures from your camera to your laptop. I may be a 9 on the scale of navigating social media platforms, but a 2 on the scale of working with cameras and platforms for example.