The Sociological Approach to Digital Natives in Gasser and Palfrey's Born Digital

In Urs Gassers and Jon Palfreys, Born Digital, both authors take a sociological approach on analyzing and interpreting the new phenomenon known as the emergence of Digital Natives, or the part of society born after 1980. The main thesis for Born Digital that Urs Gassers and Jon Palfrey were trying to transcend, was how individuals who are Born Digital are transforming the world we live in. Digital Natives are transforming our world because of their interactions and intuit with technology and the web. Those born after 1980 have grown up in a networked world and are different, in sometimes enigmatic ways, from those born before them. In Palfrey and Gasser's view, the digital natives promise to make astonishing contributions to society, but also face daunting problems. It is the authors' view that as a society we must do all we can to enable the progress, of Digital Natives, while trying to create the organizations and values necessary to protect them from the threats that they face. In addition, self-perception of self is becoming slightly effected in either a positive or detrimental way, depending on the individual. These self-perception changes are in turn changing the way we react with society in the reality. These individuals known as digital native’s have a strong knowledge for technology and the working of the internet because they were born into it. We are now living in an era where people who grew up without technology are being forced to learn and adapt to a world where technology is becoming very prevalent in everyday life. Being born into a world where technology is emerging, assuming they were born in an industrial economy, they have the benefit of not being too far behind the digital immigrants. In many homes ...

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...s how it is very much informative and it aims to educate both Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. The weakness that I found in this book is that even though the book in entirely about Digital Natives, it was constructed for Digital Immigrants and a lot of the book is spent belittling the Digital Native generation. This book is a good tool for parents and teachers, because it will help them become more involved in what their kids or students will be doing on the internet and how we can protect them from things that can be dangerous on the internet. This book touched on many good points, and I think that the biggest weakness in this book is that it does not discuss the part of our world who economically cannot access many technologies and how even though kids born after 1980 in these areas are considered digital natives when they have never used a technology.