There is no such thing as a ‘digital native’ – 06/19/2023 – Market

Call it the Abe Simpson principle. The cartoon patriarch, upon hearing his son Homer say that he wasn’t “with the thing”, replied: “I was with the thing, but then they changed what the thing was. Now, what I have is not the thing, and what it is seems strange and frightening to me”. So he warned his son, “It will happen to you.”

Grandpa Abe was right. When the term “digital native” was coined, I used to be one of them. I am part of the group that grew up in the computer age. I have a distant memory of my mother’s computer – a bulky white thing that ran Solitaire, Minesweeper and a handful of MS-DOS games – briefly feeling like an intruder in our home, but I don’t remember the time before it arrived.

What I remember is when they installed our broadband, making me one of the few people in my social circle who didn’t have to hear the dreaded words, “Get off MSN Messenger, I need to make a call.”

However, the Abe Simpson principle got to me. I recently participated in a closed-door conversation with experts and policymakers about artificial intelligence and the challenges it poses for regulators. One participant noted that while the challenge was “too great” for the current group of regulators, it would be met by the current generation of digital natives.

I listened, hoping to find out something about myself and why I was well positioned to solve this problem. Instead, I realized that I am no longer a digital native. What’s more, what a digital native is now seems strange and scary to me. For me, it meant growing up in the era after the advent of the personal computer and when cell phones were commonplace. Now, it seems to mean growing up in an era where you have 24/7 internet access whether you like it or not, and everything from far-fetched conspiracies to violent pornography is funneled into your social media feed.

In a way, this is not surprising at all. Though I’ve had a cell phone since my early teens and a smartphone soon after, I grew up in a time when my internet access was easily monitored — something my peers and I took for granted. We had a better intuitive understanding of technology than our parents, but they still had the controls, and in most cases, control of the only computer.

What it means to be a digital native has changed dramatically because the definition of “digital” has also changed. And it will keep changing: a child entering school for the first time today will have only an incomplete memory of the world without AI.

As a result, the idea of ​​a digital nativity is becoming less, not more, valuable. There was a point where the separation between a digital native and a non-native was clear enough to be useful. But even the distance between me – who has been using a computer for as long as I can remember – and someone who, just five years younger, has had a smartphone since his early teens, is already quite large. The distance between the two of us and someone who grew up with a tablet from birth is even greater.

Also, it’s not just the hardware that’s changing. The software too. Modern technology is both easier and harder to use. As a kid, I could set up my PlayStation on my own — today that would end up with a crying child and a broken game console. But other developments, not just in AI, mean that a whole range of once-complex coding tasks are now within reach of people who can’t tell their Ascii from their Cobol.

So the idea that the next wave of digital natives will be able to better regulate, solve sticky policy issues, or avoid the dangers we struggle with is an alarming illusion. The first generation of digital native parents is also the first to give their children smartphones from childhood, a decision now often criticized by teachers and experts. (And, I think, one that is unlikely to be repeated.)

Digital natives may have found themselves more successful navigating the world of e-commerce. But there is little evidence that we have been any better at regulating these industries, perhaps because, like our forefathers, our success lies in building a new world that we ourselves do not fully understand.

The confusion that comes from phases of very rapid technological change that surpass the know-how of the present generation is not over yet. Whether you’re looking for new product ideas or better ways to exploit existing technologies, the next wave of digital natives can help. But if you’re looking at them as the solution to looming regulatory or policy issues, remember that the Abe Simpson rule comes to everyone sooner or later.

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves