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Beyond the ‘digital natives’ debate: Towards a
more nuanced understanding of students’
technology experiencesjcal_360 321..331
S. Bennett* & K. Maton†
*Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, Wollongong
†Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney, Sydney
Abstract The idea of the ‘digital natives’, a generation of tech-savvy young people immersed in digital
technologies for which current education systems cannot cater, has gained widespread popular-
ity on the basis of claims rather than evidence. Recent research has shown flaws in the argument
that there is an identifiable generation or even a single type of highly adept technology user. For
educators, the diversity revealed by these studies provides valuable insights into students’ expe-
riences of technology inside and outside formal education. While this body of work provides a
preliminary understanding, it also highlights subtleties and complexities that require further
investigation. It suggests, for example, that we must go beyond simple dichotomies evident in
the digital natives debate to develop a more sophisticated understanding of our students’ expe-
riences of technology. Using a review of recent research findings as a starting point, this paper
identifies some key issues for educational researchers, offers new ways of conceptualizing key
ideas using theoretical constructs from Castells, Bourdieu and Bernstein, and makes a case for
how we need to develop the debate in order to advance our understanding.
Keywords Bernstein, Bourdieu, digital native, education, information and communication technologies,
sociology of educational technology.
Introduction
The idea that technology changes our lives profoundly
is so ubiquitous in public discourse that it has become
almost cliché. Both within and without the academy,
claims abound that technology is changing more rapidly
now than at any other time in human history. Often,
such claims convey a sense of urgency, pressing us to
keep up with changes and raising concerns that some in
our societies are being left behind. Cartoons humour-
ously depict the gap between young people who have
grown up with technology and an older generation for
whom it appears to be a mystery or a threat. Utopian
visions of a brave new world unlocked by technological
changes that promote greater equality and participation
proliferate. What underpins all of these conceptions of
modern life is the idea that advances in technology are
creating societal changes which require new approaches
and practices. Education, it is claimed, is a key arena for
radical change.
Claims about change are common in social science.
One can find a surfeit of ‘singularities’, one-off events
viewed as revolutionary. Beniger (1986) lists 75 dis-
tinct names coined between 1950 and 1985 to describe
such change. Fundamental social change, for example,
has been variously described as creating a status
society, service society, post-industrial society, post-
modern society, knowledge society and so on.
Accepted: 21 April 2010
Correspondence: Sue Bennett, Faculty of Education, University of
Wollongong, Wollongong NSW 2522, Australia. Email: sbennett@
uow.edu.au
doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00360.x
Special section
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Journal of Computer Assisted Learning (2010), 26, 321–331 321
Similarly, generations of students have been regularly
described as fundamentally dissimilar – Babyboomers,
Generation X, Generation Y, etc. – and are ascribed dif-
ferent characteristics. Indeed, moral panics over ‘new’
students are a recurrent phenomenon in education
(Hickox & Moore 1995). During the late 19th century,
for example, the expansion of formal state education
was accompanied by concerns over the entry of
middle-class and female students (Lowe 1987). Simi-
larly, policy debates in higher education during the
early 1960s focused on the knowledge, interests and
aptitudes of new, working-class students that expansion
was expected to bring into universities (Maton 2004).
Current debates over the implications of technological
change for education are similar in focusing upon
another, supposedly new kind of learner.
The argument is that radical change in education is
needed because our traditional institutions do not meet
the needs of a new generation of ‘tech-savvy’ learners.
These young people are said to be different to all gen-
erations that have gone before because they think,
behave and learn differently as a result of continuous,
pervasive exposure to modern technology. Various
labels have been applied to these young people, but the
two most common are ‘digital natives’ (Prensky 2001)
and ‘the Net Generation’ (Tapscott 1998). Akey feature
of the conception of young people as ‘digital natives’is
the apparently insurmountable gap between them and
the less technologically literate older generations. The
argument made is that ‘The single biggest problem
facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant
instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the
pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that
speaks an entirely new language’ (Prensky 2001, p. 2).
This idea has excited a great deal of interest in the
educational community and has been widely taken up
by commentators and researchers (e.g. Barnes et al.
2007; Downes 2007; Toledo 2007). Despite recent
empirical evidence undermining claims about profound
age-related differences in technology use and practices
(e.g., see other papers in this special issue), and moves
by the original authors to distance themselves from their
original claims (e.g. Prensky 2009), the idea put
forward, of a fundamental gap between the technologi-
cally skilled and unskilled, persists. The slightly modi-
fied version of the argument posits that there exists a
portion of the population who are highly adept technol-
ogy users and that these people are fundamentally dif-
ferent in their behaviours and preferences to those who
are not because of their use of technology (Dede 2005;
Oblinger & Oblinger 2005). So, while this assertion no
longer excludes older people with sufficient exposure to
digital technologies, there is still an assumption that
younger people are naturally more tech savvy. Thus,
while it may be argued that some have moved on from
simple conceptions of an age-based divide, an undercur-
rent of technological determinism persists in debates.
This paper sets aside the issue of generational differ-
ences, and focuses on claims made about young people
and their technology experiences, because it is these
claims that are driving the debate about educational
change. There are varied views about young people’s
use of technology, ranging from expressions of grave
concern about lack of socialization and poor interaction
skills, Internet addiction and cyberbullying (e.g. Cross
et al. 2009), to idealizations of a new generation of
highly motivated, highly technologized learners (e.g.,
Lorenzo et al. 2007). In short, there is a significant lack
of consensus over what effects digital technology is
actually having on young people. Here we adopt an
agnostic position, asking instead what the research evi-
dence suggests and offering suggestions for how
researchers might conceptualize the problem in such a
way as to advance understanding in this area. First, we
examine what current research suggests about young
people’s use of technology.
Research on access to technology
A longstanding focus of research has been the extent of
young people’s access to technology, because it is an
obvious precursor to technology use. For example, in
the early days of computers in schools, there was a sig-
nificant focus on the level of computer provision and
technology infrastructure in schools (e.g., CEO Forum
1999). Additionally, access to technology is relatively
easy to measure and has therefore been included in most
surveys that aim to quantify aspects of young people’s
technology use.
Surveys of university students, for example, have
found that access to some technologies is almost univer-
sal. Very high proportions of students have access to
their own mobile phone and sole access to either a
laptop or desktop computer (Oliver & Goerke 2007;
Kennedy et al. 2009; Margaryan & Littlejohn 2009;
Maton & Bennett 2010). The same studies show that
322 S. Bennett & K. Maton
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
access to other technologies is more mixed or, in the
case of personal digital assistants (PDAs) and handheld
computers, quite limited. The key reasons for the lesser
popularity of these devices, as explained by students in
focus group interviews, have been their high cost and
lack of distinct advantage over technologies that stu-
dents already use (Salaway & Caruso 2007). This is
understandable given that young people are sensitive to
cost and often opt for less expensive alternatives, such
as sending text messages rather than making telephone
calls. Some longitudinal surveys have been useful in
detecting changes in access patterns (e.g., the ongoing
ECAR study of undergraduate students and information
technology). These show that some technologies
become more popular, while others decline. Obvious
recent examples are the increase in laptop computer
ownership and broadband access among students, with
a decline in dial-up Internet use (Salaway & Caruso
2007). Such changes, enabled by lower costs to con-
sumers, mirror changes in the general population in
many developed countries.
While this information provides useful data about the
array of technological devices available to young
people, qualitative research highlights some of the diffi-
culties with interpreting measures of access to technol-
ogy. Studies of school-aged children in particular have
highlighted differences in the ways home access to tech-
nology is determined according to the location of the
computer, rules about access and the value placed on
technology as an educational or recreational device
(Downes 1998; Kerawalla & Crook 2002). In some
households, one or more parents may be observed using
the computer as a work tool, modelling particular types
of use to children in the household or involving children
in a home-based business (Thrupp 2008). In other
households, technology use may be directed towards
particular activities or restricted in the belief that
overuse may be harmful or that there is a risk of the com-
puter being damaged (Hargittai & Hinnant 2008). Dif-
ferences in access in different locations can further
complicate the issue. For example, a study of primary
school children in Australia showed that despite very
low access to technology outside of school (as low as 5%
in some classes), students at one disadvantaged school
had high levels of access to computers at school for both
academic and non-academic purposes (Campbell 2006).
Other studies, however, have shown that school use does
not always mitigate low access at home (Facer &
Furlong 2001). These studies demonstrate that ‘access is
a far more complex issue than mere provision of facili-
ties’ (Furlong et al. 2000, p. 94) because the availability
of a computer does not necessarily mean genuine access.
It is difficult to compare the findings about access
between school-aged children and university students
on the basis of the data currently available and differ-
ences in the ways the research has been constructed.
Studies of school-aged children have typically been
more careful in distinguishing between access in differ-
ent contexts (namely home and school) and have
explored what that access means in practice. Less is
known about technology access in the different contexts
in which young adults engage (e.g. Committee of
Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience 2009). It
may be that some of the complexities of access are
resolved as young people grow up, become more inde-
pendent and have more freedom in their access to tech-
nology as they reach university. It may also be that
university students tend to come from higher socio-
economic backgrounds and therefore experience fewer
difficulties in accessing technologies. The tentative
nature of these suggestions reflects current gaps in our
understanding.
What these studies suggest is that young people grow
up with different histories of access to technology and
therefore different opportunities. This leads to the con-
clusion that measures of access tell only part of the
story, and that it may be more important to understand
the nature of the technology-based activities in which
young people engage. Some progress has been made
towards addressing these questions by studies that seek
to investigate the nature of different types of
technology-based activities.
Research on technology-based activities
In asking questions concentrated more on activities than
access, researchers have tried to move the focus away
from particular technologies and towards the types of
activities those technologies support, such as communi-
cation, information access and content creation, often
including both academic and everyday activities (e.g.
Kennedy et al. 2009; Maton & Bennett 2010; plus other
papers in this special issue). Key challenges in the
development of surveys include determining how fine-
grained items should be (for example, deciding whether
it is important to distinguish between communication
Beyond the ‘digital natives’ debate 323
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
by email and instant messaging) and ensuring that the
language used results in a valid item when technical
terms are not commonly used in ordinary parlance (for
example, explaining terms like ‘social networking’ or
‘microblogging’ using the names of common tools).
Large-scale surveys investigating the frequency of
technology-based activities are often complemented by
interviews that seek to discover the reasons underlying
patterns in the data (e.g. Salaway & Caruso 2007;
Kennedy et al. 2009; Maton & Bennett 2010).
A common finding among the various studies is that
some activities are undertaken frequently by a majority
of respondents. This is particularly so for accessing
information and communicating via the Internet and
mobile technologies (e.g. Salaway & Caruso 2007;
Kennedy et al. 2009; Maton & Bennett 2010). Other
technology-based activities are undertaken by fewer
respondents and/or less frequently. For example,
content creation activities (as measured by items such as
creating text, graphics, audio or video) are consistently
lower than might be anticipated given many claims
about what young people are doing with technology. In
fact, with the exception of social networking, most
activities associated with Web 2.0 are engaged in by a
minority of respondents on key large-scale surveys (e.g.
Salaway & Caruso 2007; Kennedy et al. 2009; Maton &
Bennett 2010; Jones et al. 2010). Interview data from
studies revealed that many students were unsure what
some Web 2.0 tools, such as blogs and wikis, were
(Kennedy et al. 2009; Maton & Bennett 2010). Such
findings run counter to claims made about the creativity
of this new generation, such as:
Constantly connected to information and each other,
students don’t just consume information. They create –
and re-create – it. With a do-it-yourself, open source
approach to material, students often take existing mate-
rial, add their own touches, and republish it. Bypassing
traditional authority channels, self-publishing – in print,
image, video, or audio – is common. (Lorenzo et al.
2007, p. 2)
Surveys of young adults also suggest that game
playing, another activity commonly associated with
young people’s technology use and preferences (Pren-
sky 2001), is also lower than might be expected
(Kennedy et al. 2009; Maton & Bennett 2010). Such
findings appear at odds with some studies indicating
high levels of game playing among children and teenag-
ers (e.g. Downes 2002; Kent & Facer 2004), but may
suggest that time and motivation for computer- or
console-based game play decline at later life stages
when young people have both more freedom from home
and more responsibilities involving work and education.
Some studies of children and teenagers suggest that spe-
cialization in particular types of technology-based
activities may develop at an early age. For example,
Thrupp (2008) identified ‘gamers’, a group highly
engaged in computer game playing, as a particular sub-
group in her study of primary school children’s
technology-based activities. These children could be
differentiated from others in the study who played
games some of the time, but demonstrated different spe-
cializations or interests both on and off the computer.
Green and Hannon (2007) suggested different user types
with their own particular expertise: ‘digital pioneers’,
‘creative producers’, ‘everyday communicators’ and
‘information gatherers’.
Importantly, it is these studies of technology-based
activities, rather than those measuring access, that have
begun to highlight significant variations across age,
gender and socio-economic status (e.g., Livingstone &
Helsper 2007; Selwyn 2008). These variations appear
more pronounced in studies of school-aged children
than in university students, which might be explained by
schools comprising a more diverse social population
than universities. Put simply, university student popula-
tions are not representative of the broader population;
for example, they are skewed towards higher socio-
economic sections of the community (Bradley et al.
2008).
In essence, what these research findings suggest is
that while there are some very common technology-
based activities engaged in frequently by a majority of
respondents, frequency of use and extent of use within
these populations of young people beyond this subset is
highly varied. There are some who engage in a wide
range of technology-based activities, including content
creation and self-publishing, at high frequencies, while
there are significant numbers among the same sample
who never participate in those activities. In addition,
there are a spread of moderate users. Qualitative
research provides some insights into the choices young
people make about technology, suggesting that technol-
ogy is used for particular, highly contextualized pur-
poses and chosen for its value, its suitability for the
purpose, and the nature of the interactions offered. A
further suggestion from the findings is that the activities
324 S. Bennett & K. Maton
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
engaged in may be significantly influenced by both the
life stage of the young person and the interests s/he
wishes to pursue.
It is clear from this recent research that there is sig-
nificant variation in the ways in which young people use
technology, suggesting that rather than being a homog-
enous generation, there is a diversity of interests, moti-
vations and needs. So while some young people might
be regarded as ‘digital natives’, these are by no means
characteristics shared by all young people simply
because of their exposure to digital technologies.
Although progress has been made in investigating this
phenomenon, there are significant gaps in our under-
standing. More research is needed into what young
people choose to do with technology and why, what it is
they value and what they do not, according to the con-
texts in which they engage. Having reviewed some of
the recent research evidence about young people’s tech-
nology use, we now turn our attention back to education
and consider the key issues for educational researchers.
Key issues for educational researchers
The lack of evidence for the existence of an entire gen-
eration of digital natives seriously undermines argu-
ments made for radical change to education because of a
proclaimed disjuncture between the needs of young
people and their educational institutions. This is not to
say that education should not change at all, but merely,
that the basis of the argument, as it is currently made, is
fundamentally flawed. This does not mean that we
cannot learn more about our students and consider what
use we might put this new knowledge to. Indeed, a valu-
able outcome of the current research agenda has been to
demonstrate just how diverse learners of all ages are in
their technology experiences. Coming to understand
what this means raises a series of interrelated issues
about the nature of education and its role in young peo-
ple’s lives.
First, we can consider what these findings mean for
the goal of integrating popular new technologies to
support learning. The advent of new technology always
raises questions and claims about how it can be used
effectively in education. In turn, these raise questions of
the extent to which skills, interests and values devel-
oped in everyday technology-based activities can be
transferred to academic contexts. Current research sug-
gests that this is likely to be highly variable and that stu-
dents may not be as skilled with technology as often
assumed, particularly with advanced activities
(Salaway & Caruso 2007; Singh et al. 2008; Kennedy
et al. 2009; Maton & Bennett 2010). The conclusion is
that the familiar issues of equity and student training
still need to be considered.
A more subtle point is that everyday technology-
based activities may not prepare students well for
academic practices. For example, general information-
seeking strategies may have limited application to tasks
requiring synthesis and critical evaluation (Jenkins
2004). Writing a blog while travelling abroad may not
equip students with the skills they need to use the same
technology to develop a reflective journal as part of their
studies – the nature of the tasks and the forms taken by
the knowledge being constructed are different. Addi-
tionally, norms and values may not transfer from every-
day situations to academic tasks. For example, while
comments from others may be valued within communi-
ties of interest (for example, a forum devoted to moun-
tain bike riding), information from peers may be
ascribed lesser value in an academic context in which
students do not trust their classmates to be right (see
examples from Web 2.0 implementations in Clark et al.
2008; Kennedy et al. 2009; see also Chen et al. in
press).
Of course, many of these issues would become irrel-
evant if education became more like everyday life; i.e. if
formal learning became more like informal learning.
Indeed, this is often prescribed as the solution (Tapscott
1998; Prensky 2001). Much of this discussion
de-privileges education, teachers and knowledge, while
valorizing the proclaimed attributes of the tech-savvy
student. This student is held to feel disengaged and dis-
enfranchised while education is cast as unchanged,
unchanging and unchangeable (Bayne & Ross 2007).
Such unevidenced characterizations serve us all poorly.
Not only do they fail to acknowledge the ways in which
formal education does change, but they devalue it to
such an extent that it is difficult to comprehend what it
could offer. It is to discount wholly the notion that
formal education can and does provide an important
complement to informal learning (Facer & Furlong
2001; Jenkins 2004).
A more promising approach is to consider formal
educational contexts and everyday contexts as being
different, comprising different activities with different
purposes and outcomes, without necessarily
Beyond the ‘digital natives’ debate 325
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
privileging one over the other. We also need to move
beyond a simple dichotomy between ‘everyday’ and
‘education’. In reality, young people engage in a wide
range of different contexts, many of which entail learn-
ing in more or less formalized ways, and even within
educational institutions there exists an array of learning
settings. The most useful stance therefore is to strive to
understand what knowledge and assumptions students
bring to academic contexts from other aspects of their
lives, and what that means to teaching and learning. To
do so we need more sophisticated ways of conceptualiz-
ing research that will also enable us to move beyond
description and towards explanation. The next section
will discuss concepts from the sociology of education
and knowledge which offer possible means for accom-
plishing this move forward.
Conceptualizing the issues
Castells’s (2001) notion of ‘networked individualism’
provides a useful starting point for how we might build a
conceptual framework for further investigating young
people’s technology experiences. Castells proposes that
the Internet provides material support for a ‘new pattern
of sociability based on individualism’(Castells 2001, p.
130) which connects people not only through traditional
family and local community networks, but also through
geographically dispersed social networks connected by
computer communications. In this vision of the modern
world, these new societal structures enable people to
engage in ‘multiple, partial communities as they deal
with shifting, amorphous networks of kin, neighbours,
friends, workmates and organizational ties’ (Wellman
2002, p. 2). In this conceptualization, each person navi-
gates his or her own personal network, involvement in
networks varies from person to person, people some-
times take on specialized roles in different networks,
and loose networks of interest with weak ties evolve and
devolve. As such, our focus becomes the networked
individual and his or her experience of the world via
these networks. In terms of young people’s technology
use, the focus is placed on the individual and on how
they experience the different contexts in their networks
through the technologies they use. At the very least,
such a conception alerts us to the variegated and shifting
nature of the many contexts in which young people
engage during the course of their daily lives. The next
step is thus to develop a means of conceptualizing these
different contexts in ways that move us beyond such
reductive dichotomies as ‘everyday’ and ‘educational‘.
Bourdieu’s interconnected concepts of ‘field’,
‘capital’ and ‘habitus’provides one means of analysing
the varied contexts in which people operate in their net-
works (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992). According to
Bourdieu (1990), actors occupy a variety of social fields
of practice, each with its own unwritten ‘rules of the
game’ or ways of working and acting that structure these
different contexts. For Bourdieu practices are shaped
by: actors’ ‘habituses’ (or dispositions structured by
experiences); their ‘capital’ (the status and resources
they possess and thus their position in the hierarchies of
any particular context); and the state of play in struggles
for status in the ‘fields’ or contexts they occupy (Lingard
& Christie 2003; Maton 2005, 2008). ‘Field’ conceptu-
alizes social contexts in terms of their degree of relative
autonomy from other contexts (e.g. whether the domi-
nant ways of acting, values and interests are specific to
the context or drawn from other fields), and relations
between actors in terms of status hierarchies (e.g.
whether actors are considered expert authorities or mar-
ginal participants). ‘Capital’ conceptualizes the basis of
these positions in terms of what is at stake in struggles
for status and resources; i.e. what underpins authority,
what is valued, what actors gain from their participa-
tion, etc. ‘Habitus’ conceptualizes the embodied dispo-
sitions that actors carry across the varied contexts of
their daily lives, drawing attention to such issues as
social and educational backgrounds, how actors come
to be involved in particular practices, and how they learn
their practices. Drawing on this approach places the
technology practices of young adults at the centre of the
various and varied, relatively autonomous social worlds
in which they are situated. Using Bourdieu’s ‘field’
theory would thus reveal the different structures and
practices associated with different educational contexts
and different everyday contexts, enabling them to be
viewed both less homogeneously and less dichoto-
mously. This enables a more nuanced understanding
than previous conceptualizations which have drawn a
sharp distinction between the everyday world and edu-
cation, without acknowledging that there are many and
varied contexts in which young people engage with
technology1.
Using only Bourdieu’s approach, however, would
focus more on the social dimensions of practices than
the forms of knowledge produced. As recent critiques
326 S. Bennett & K. Maton
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
argue, Bourdieu’s concepts are useful for analysing the
nature of contexts, but not the nature of the knowledge
and practices actors engage with in those contexts
(Maton 2003, 2005; Moore 2007). The work of Bern-
stein offers a theory of the forms taken by knowledge.
For example, Bernstein’s ideas conceptualize important
differences between knowledge gained through infor-
mal everyday contexts and knowledge developed in
formal educational contexts. ‘Horizontal discourse’ or
everyday knowledge is more ‘contextually specific and
“context dependent”, embedded in on-going practices
. . . and directed towards specific immediate goals,
highly relevant to the acquirer in the context of his/her
life’ (Bernstein 1999, p. 161). Usually acquired in social
relations with a strong affective loading, such as the
family and peer group, the knowledge gained takes a
segmented form, its meaning typically related to spe-
cific contexts. As a result, what is learned in one context
may bear little relation to what is learned in another.As
Bernstein puts it, ‘Learning how to tie up one’s shoes
bears no relation to how to use the lavatory correctly’
(1999, p. 160).
In contrast, the meaning of ‘vertical discourse’ or
educational knowledge is less related to specific con-
texts but rather related to other knowledge and ‘takes the
form of a coherent, explicit, and systematically prin-
cipled structure’ (Bernstein 1999, p.159). The meaning
of educational knowledge is given by its relations with
other meanings rather than its social context. Moreover,
these meanings are related in particular ways for the
explicit purpose of formal education. For example, as
Moss (2001) explains, educational knowledge is:
always sequentially ordered. What is known now gains
its significance from what comes next, as well as what
has gone before. In this sense knowledge enacted at a par-
ticular moment in formal settings is never self-contained,
but always points both onward and back, creating strong
development trajectories.
In short, a defining characteristic of knowledge
gained in a formal educational context is that it is peda-
gogized knowledge. That is, it is knowledge that has
been selected, re-arranged into a particular sequence
within a curriculum, and recontextualized within spe-
cific contexts of teaching and learning (Singh 2002).
Such a conception recognizes the important role of the
teacher, such as relating current learning activities to
what students have already learned and what they will
learn in the future.
Educational knowledge is thus not simply everyday
knowledge located in an educational context: it has a
different form2. Moreover, not all educational knowl-
edge has the same form. Bernstein goes further to con-
ceptualize the different forms taken by knowledge in
terms of different ‘knowledge structures’. This high-
lights, as a growing range of studies are showing, that
the forms taken by knowledges in different disciplines
are different, as are their structures of curriculum, peda-
gogy and assessment, in ways that cannot simply be dis-
missed or wished away (Christie & Martin 2007; Maton
& Moore 2010; Christie & Maton in press). Where
Bourdieu’s approach enables differences between con-
texts to be systematically theorized in a less simplistic
way, Bernstein’s concepts thereby enable differences
between the knowledges and practices of these contexts
to be understood in a less dichotomous and homogeniz-
ing manner.
It is insufficient to simply state that the lives of young
people involve multiple, complex and overlapping
social universes; to understand the role technology
plays, one needs to be able to theorize those universes
and the varied forms of knowledge and practices they
involve. Using these concepts as a theoretical lens
through which to conceptualize the social practices and
the forms of knowledge in the different contexts in
which a person engages provides a further basis for con-
ducting research into young people’s technology expe-
riences. They provide an entrée into the complex worlds
people inhabit and suggest a means by which we can
build a more sophisticated understanding of current
phenomena. They may provide insights into why tech-
nologies are useful in representing knowledge, learning
and interacting differently in different contexts, every-
day and academic, and across disciplines. It is these
insights that may provide a better basis for predicting
which ‘everyday’ technology-supported activities have
most relevance for which forms of formal education,
when, where, how and for which students.
We are not arguing that these are the only possible
research approaches or questions, merely that they are
suggested by the trajectory of the current findings of
research. A wide range of studies from other perspec-
tives may be valid, and there are likely to continue to be
multiple ways of conceptualizing and investigating this
research area. However, as we shall now argue, this
research will only be able to advance knowledge if the
nature of the debate over ‘digital natives’itself advances.
Beyond the ‘digital natives’ debate 327
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Advancing the debate over ‘digital natives’
In addition to the need for more research evidence as an
empirical base for discussions about young people’s
technology experiences, the tenor of the debate needs to
change. Elsewhere we have argued that much of the dis-
cussion about digital natives has taken the form of an
‘academic moral panic’, in which dramatic language
proclaiming profound change and a series of strongly
bounded divides close down genuine debate (Bennett
et al. 2008). Two other concepts are useful in character-
izing why the current discussion has been resistant to
the intellectual rigour it requires and deserves: ‘histori-
cal amnesia’ and the ‘certainly–complacency spiral’.
A key feature of the debate so far is ‘historical
amnesia’ (Maton in press). Declarations of fundamental
change obscure if not explicitly deny past precedents for
contemporary change. Such arguments proclaim a
rupture or radical break with the past, rendering the field
unable to address the very claim upon which the phe-
nomenon is based, namely social and intellectual
change (e.g. Tapscott 1998; Prensky 2001). Such senti-
ments betray amnesia about the history of education.
They are the same as claims made, for example, in the
late 1950s and early 1960s about a generation of stu-
dents immersed in new forms of commercial culture,
such as television and popular music. Schools and the
everyday lives of young people were held to be radically
different and ‘the children have to live with a foot in
both these worlds’(National Union of Teachers 1960, p.
26). Such precedents are, however, erased in the digital
natives debate, accentuating the apparent ‘newness’ of
the current situation.3Erasing the past in this way
renders social and intellectual change an ‘article of
faith’rather than an ‘object of inquiry’(Moore & Maton
2001). The past becomes a ‘foreign country’ and the
young and old are considered to inhabit different
worlds. Given the research evidence to the contrary and
the illogic of such a position, it is futile to continue with
these kinds of arguments.
This thinking also prevents us from discriminating
between genuinely new phenomena and those which are
extensions of existing interests and well-recognized
behaviours (Golding 2000). Something that has
changed is the extent to which some activities, which
were previously ephemeral, are now made visible on a
forum or social networking site [see Dunkels (2006)
idea of ‘surfacing’]. Selwyn’s (2007) study illustrates
this phenomenon well by demonstrating how previ-
ously unobserved behaviours, such as students com-
plaining about teaching staff or asking each other about
assignments, are made manifest when recorded on
Facebook. Despite the use of a new medium, these are
clearly not new phenomena, although their new visibil-
ity might have implications for teachers and students. A
more serious example is the way that bullying has found
new vehicles through the Internet and mobile phones.
Many bullying behaviours are variants on familiar inter-
actions, casting them, therefore, as ‘entirely new’ may
be unnecessarily alarmist because current anti-bullying
strategies may still be effective or capable of adaptation.
Equally though, understanding the implications of new
forms made possible by technology are important for
extending current strategies to appropriately address
this evolving problem.
Another feature of the debate is what can be termed a
‘certainty–complacency spiral’ that enables the uncriti-
cal reproduction of the terms ‘digital native’ or ‘Net
Generation’ in ways that give both of them a credence
they do not deserve and amplifies their significance.
The more certain authors are that digital natives exist,
the less likely they seem to be to question claims made
about them by other authors. For example, publications
comprising unevidenced claims have often been rou-
tinely cited as if they contained researched evidence.
This complacent, uncritical acceptance of the veracity
of such claims in turn encourages further certainty, as
the number of publications adopting the term grows.
Belief replaces considered debate, and echoing com-
monsense perceptions of fundamental change and
citations of similar claims made by other authors sub-
stitutes for research evidence. Each proclamation of the
existence and needs of ‘digital natives’ thereby itera-
tively amplifies and reinforces the sense of certainty
and encourages intellectual complacency. Rather than
representing bold conjectures to be tested, claims
become unquestioningly repeated as if established
facts, restricting the possibility of open, rational
debate. Intellectual complacency over the veracity of
claims (whether digital natives exist, whether they take
the form ascribed and whether education needs chang-
ing in the ways called for) is masked by the urgency
and stridency with which calls for change are made.
Indeed, those who pause for thought or raise questions
can be described as complacent in the face of an
impending crisis. Thus, intellectual complacency and
328 S. Bennett & K. Maton
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
sensationalist declarations of an educational emer-
gency – an academic moral panic – may go hand in
hand.
Couching this case in terms of fundamental change
also privileges those making the claims. To question the
break is to be assigned to the other side, those people
who cannot or will not see the break, those people who
‘don’t get it’ (Maton & Moore 2000).We should empha-
size that we are in no way suggesting a conscious sup-
pression of scepticism, nor that everyone involved in the
debate exemplifies this position. Rather, we are arguing
that the way the debate has been constructed by some
digital native proponents is working against the
advancement of knowledge in this area. If we really
want to understand young people’s technology experi-
ences and what should happen to education because of
them, we need to move the debate on to be less self-
interested and more dispassionate.
Conclusion
Given the growing body of evidence that simulta-
neously refutes the simple notion of the ‘digital native’
and highlights the complexities of young people’s tech-
nology experiences, it is timely to reflect on the emerg-
ing research agenda. Clearly it will continue to be
important to measure access and activity through large-
scale surveys. These provide general information about
patterns of engagement, trends over time and the broad
characteristics of subgroups as technology use changes
and new technologies emerge. By the same token, quali-
tative methods will continue to be critical to acquiring
in-depth insights into the basis for differences in access
and activity and what they mean in the lives of individu-
als. There is now an excellent foundation for further
research, but we suggest that this research would benefit
from a more theoretically informed basis. We suggested
some ways of conceptualizing these research issues
drawing on theories from the sociology of education
and knowledge, but this does not preclude other per-
spectives. We also argued that to move the debate
forward we must change its nature and engage with the
important researchable issues, rather than taking up
opposing positions. It is, we have argued, time to move
beyond the ‘digital natives’debate as it currently stands,
and towards a more sophisticated, rational debate that
can enable us to provide the education that young
people deserve.
Notes
1See North et al. (2008) for an example of how Bourdieu’s concepts can be
applied to young people’s technology use.
2This distinction between everyday and educational knowledge is not based on a
dichotomy between inside and outside formal education. Bernstein’s notion
focuses not on the location of the context but on the structure of the knowledge
and the practices themselves. Therefore it is possible for a discourse in contexts
outside schooling to exhibit a ‘vertical’ structure.
3There is, however, a new twist on the familiar idea of the ‘generation gap’. In
earlier debates, young people’s engagement with popular culture was consid-
ered intrinsically damaging. By contrast, in the digital native argument young
people’s technology use is considered intrinsically good and it is the older gen-
eration that must ‘catch up’.
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