Tech Task 3: Students in the Digital Age
I don't know how old you are, but chances are you've seen a lot of "sure" things change. The Soviet Union still existed when I was born, but the West's eternal enemy was, a scant 18 months later, as dead as the dodo.
Ah, but things never really change, you might say. Ask a teenager who the West's greatest enemy is and, depending on what news they watch, they'll probably say Russia, won't they?
If you ask me, and by reading this blog you sort of implicitly did, young people haven't changed all that much either, at least since they took more control over our culture in the middle of the last century. For all the pearl-clutching worry about how technology is changing our precious youth, making them dumber, more vapid, lazier, on and on...well, it isn't. It's just changing how they express what youth have always been.
It's amplifying it, really. Young people have always craved connection and belonging, craved growth, had fluid identities, cared deeply about things, and, unfortunately, been vulnerable to exploitation and malevolence.
Any young person, no matter how socially excluded, can find somewhere on the Internet that they belong, somewhere benign like a chat room about a video game they like, or somewhere as sinister and awful as a white-supremacy forum. They can connect to anybody in the world, 24/7, be they future friend or dangerous predator. Social media allows young people to express what they deeply care about, be it a band or how their future is very much in doubt. They can learn how to make a robot out of household junk, or how to make a pipe bomb.
In short, nothing that we worry about involving youth and technology is really new, the good and the bad. What is new is the magnitude, the ease, and the scale of it all.
I'm pretty old as millennials go. I can only watch students from the outside and remember how, not that long ago, I was young and wanted all the things that wanted. Most of you are younger than me, so maybe that will be easier. I think that empathy is the first step to teaching them how to navigate the world they will inherit.
What's the second?
Ah, but things never really change, you might say. Ask a teenager who the West's greatest enemy is and, depending on what news they watch, they'll probably say Russia, won't they?
If you ask me, and by reading this blog you sort of implicitly did, young people haven't changed all that much either, at least since they took more control over our culture in the middle of the last century. For all the pearl-clutching worry about how technology is changing our precious youth, making them dumber, more vapid, lazier, on and on...well, it isn't. It's just changing how they express what youth have always been.
It's amplifying it, really. Young people have always craved connection and belonging, craved growth, had fluid identities, cared deeply about things, and, unfortunately, been vulnerable to exploitation and malevolence.
Any young person, no matter how socially excluded, can find somewhere on the Internet that they belong, somewhere benign like a chat room about a video game they like, or somewhere as sinister and awful as a white-supremacy forum. They can connect to anybody in the world, 24/7, be they future friend or dangerous predator. Social media allows young people to express what they deeply care about, be it a band or how their future is very much in doubt. They can learn how to make a robot out of household junk, or how to make a pipe bomb.
In short, nothing that we worry about involving youth and technology is really new, the good and the bad. What is new is the magnitude, the ease, and the scale of it all.
I'm pretty old as millennials go. I can only watch students from the outside and remember how, not that long ago, I was young and wanted all the things that wanted. Most of you are younger than me, so maybe that will be easier. I think that empathy is the first step to teaching them how to navigate the world they will inherit.
What's the second?
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