The Social Implications of Technology

The second area that I would like to explore is the social implications of technology with our Digital Natives.  Authors, Sherry Turkle (Alone Together), Gary Small (iBrain), John Palfrey & Urs Gasser (Digital Born) all agree that indeed there are social implications for our hyperconnected Digital Natives. The three areas that concern me the most are:  loss of face-to-face communication and social skills, cyberbullying and the loss of privacy.

Turkle, Small, Palfrey and Gasser all agree that our hyperconnected Digital Natives have the potential to be socially awkward and not possess ability to read facial expressions and subtle gesture.  Much miscommunication can occur amongst our Digital Natives.  Small sums it up when he states: “Imagine how the continued slipping of social skills might affect and an international summit meeting ten years from now when a misread facial cue or a misunderstood gesture could make the difference between escalating military conflict or peace” (p.2). Our students are tomorrow’s leaders so this is a real possibility.  This ties in with Turkles’ idea of the human elements (body language, facial expression and intonation etc.) that separates humans from the robots.  So, my question is, if our Digital Natives are continually hyperconnected, how long will it take for them to resemble robots more than humans.  I know this sounds far fetched, but if we do not intervene and educate our Digital Natives now on the importance of face-to-face communication and socialization, how far is this notion really?

Cyberbullying is growing problem amongst our Digital Natives.  I have witnessed this type of bullying occurring in young grade three students and the idea of this escalating as these students grow older if they are not stopped and educated is alarming.  The above authors agree that the anonymity the Internet provides a person enables them to behave in ways that they may not necessarily do if they were face-to-face with that person. Our young Digital Natives whose frontal lobes (decision making, empathy etc.) of their brain are not yet fully developed may not necessary understand the implication of their behaviour and that it is bullying.  Some may say that young brains should not be overloaded with technology.  I believe that abstaining from technology is not realistic and instead we should educate our young Digital Natives on the ethics and responsibilities of the Internet user.

Today’s students may not understand what the essence of privacy as many of them are growing up in the most public domain…the Internet. They don’t know understand the ramifications of posting their personal information on the Net until it may be too late such as when they are trying to find a job.  The above mentioned authors including Don Tapscott author of Grown Up Digital (2009) are in agreement that much needed educating needs to happen for our Digital Natives. They need to be exposed to what real privacy is.  They need to be educated on how to maintain their privacy and finally, they need to know that privacy is a right and one they should strive for.  In our digital world the emphasis is on sharing everything from files, music, pictures, minute to minute happenings, but it doesn’t have to be that way.  Our Natives don’t have to be continually connected or in Turkles’ words “always on” and they certainly do not have to share intimate details of their life.  They need to be taught that it is ok to keep personal information to themselves and that they have a right to their privacy.

I have also read Don Tapscott author of Grown Up Digital (2009) and he has a very different view of the functionality of our Digital Natives and to sum it up, feels we should embrace the digital way of life and learn from our Natives as they by far are the most intelligent generation yet.  I am not in agreement with him.  I like Turkle believe that our digital world is in its infancy stage and we as a society need to learn to moderate our digital use and learn to use and respect technology for being a tool.  Turkle, Small, Palfrey and Gasser all agree that both the Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants can learn from each other.  The Digital Native can teach the Digital Immigrants how to be tech-savvy and the Digital Immigrants can teach the Digital Natives face-to-face communication and social skills and lengthening attention spans.  To me, this is a win-win relationship.

As a friend said to me a couple of months ago.  “We should go into the digital world as it’s an exciting world, but we should do it with caution and not forget all that we have learnt from our past in history.” This to me is wisdom.