Prensky (2001)’s ¨Digital Native/Digital Immigrant¨ Concept Revisited: Are We Trapped in a Metaphor?

By Paula Gabriela Ferrari

- Academic Summary - 

Prensky (2001)’s ¨Digital Native/Digital Immigrant¨ Concept Revisited: Are We Trapped in a Metaphor? 

In his critique entitled ¨Review of Deconstructing Digital Natives¨, Mark E. Nelson carefully examines the book ¨Deconstructing Digital Natives¨ and provides his own reflections on this controversial topic. 

Because the book itself centers on Marc Prensky’s metaphoric distinction between digital native/digital immigrant, Nelson begins by quoting Prensky’s words to define these concepts.    According to Prensky (2001),  digital natives are the people who have been daily interacting with digital technology since they were born. As opposed to this notion, the term digital immigrants makes reference to those people who have incorporated digital technology later in their lives.   Nelson points out that the digital native metaphor (and its corollary, digital immigrant) has triggered heated debates among scholars and that Deconstructing Digital Natives is to date the only edited volume which analytically treats this issue. 

Before delving into a detailed summary of each of the twelve chapters, Nelson praises David Buckingham’s foreword and adheres to his view that, even though technology feeds societies with a broad array of opportunities and restrictions, it does not constitute a factor capable of changing them.  After the foreword, the book contains an introductory chapter by its editor, Michael Thomas, and eleven more chapters distributed in three sections: ¨Reflecting on the myths¨, ¨Perspectives¨, and ¨Beyond digital natives¨. 

Part One, ¨Reflecting on the myths¨, begins with a contribution by Mark Prensky in which he reviews the responses of his critics over the last decade.  Prensky then introduces the concept of ¨digital wisdom¨, for it is his belief that digital technology is key to enhance the human brain.  Prensky’s argument is then countered by Jones’ following contribution, where he suggests that, instead of assuming that the prospect of an entire generation may be determined by digital technologies, scholars should explore how new technologies are being used and adopted by young people for educational purposes.

Part Two, ¨Perspectives¨, is comprised of a number of contributions that provide empirical data and case studies about the digital natives discourse in different national, cultural or disciplinary settings. 

There are two chapters in Part Three, ¨Beyond digital natives¨.  In the first one, the two authors (Bennet and Maton) restate their claim that there is not enough evidence to support Prensky’s arguments.  Moreover, these authors affirm that the debate should not center on the generational differences caused by the impact of technologies.  Instead, they believe that further research should be conducted toward studying the way young people’s quotidian routines integrate technology and Nelson seems to endorse this necessity.  In the final chapter, Palfrey and Gasser indicate that it is of utmost importance to ¨share a common commitment to understanding of what is going on with new media practices and …[to] work together to seize the opportunities and mitigate the challenges associated with media practices of youth and adults alike¨ (as cited in Nelson, 2012, p.201).  In his review, Nelson regards this suggestion as sensible and highly pertinent. 

Nelson further inquires into the power of metaphors in general and quotes Henry Jenkins’ remarks on the digital immigrants metaphor.  According to Jenkins (2007), this metaphor has exacerbated the generation gap between adults and young people.  Likewise, Nelson stresses the need to subject this metaphor to cross-examination and considers that Deconstructing Digital Natives provides such analysis.  He even suggests that, given the strong criticism the digital natives metaphor has received throughout the book, it should have been better if it had been entitled ¨debunking¨ (p.38).  Furthermore, Nelson believes that scholars who support the digital natives/digital immigrants formulation should have been invited to contribute so as to provide ¨a somewhat more balanced representation of voices¨(p.38).         

Another criticism that Nelson offers is concerned with the format of the book itself.  In his opinion, the lack of images, charts or figures in certain articles hindered a proper understanding.  He goes on to point out that the index should have been better organized to facilitate the reader’s association of the different viewpoints related to the same issue.

Despite these criticisms, Nelson concludes that the book successfully analyzes the assumptions, metaphors and myths which intersect young people, technology and education and recommends it to students, teachers and people interested in this theme.

References

Jenkins, H. (2007).  Reconsidering digital immigrants.  Retrieved from http://henryjenkins.org/2007/12/reconsidering_digital_immigran.html

Nelson, M. (2012).  Review of Deconstructing Digital Natives.  Language Learning and Technology, 16(3), 35–39. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/october2012/review1.pdf

Prensky, M. (2001).  Digital natives, digital immigrants.  On the Horizon.  Retrieved from  http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

Prensky (2001)’s ¨Digital Native/Digital Immigrant¨ Concept Revisited: Are We Trapped in a Metaphor? byPaula Gabriela Ferrari is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.