Digital natives - pffff

Sarah Hartley has posted an interesting piece on the digital native theme.

Her post got me thinking and I posted a comment. Being the lazy sod I am, I repost the comment here as a posting.

I have some issues with the digital native/ digital immigrant meme.
I do not think it is a useful dichotomy as it makes age an arbitrary measurement to digital understanding. It makes it seem that if you are young enough, then you automatically have a digital mindset. I have seen no evidence of this. My j-students are often rigidly locked in to an analogue vision of the industry, see print (or radio or tv, or even a mixture of all three but in an analogue manner) as their future and do not easily understand the principals of conversation contra lecturing that many of us propagate as the (only) future for journalism. [When I say analogue I am talking about mindset, not technology. One can master digital technology and still have an analogue mindset. This is the situation for more and more journalists today.] They have some degree of technical knowledge (though that is often over-estimated) but no great conceptual grasp of the shift from analogue to digital.
(See Andys post  [ http://www.andydickinson.net/2007/01/14/journalism-education-we-lost-em-before-we-got-em/ ]as a starting point into this discussion)

The follow-on from this is that journalism educators develop courses that are tech based and program oriented which play to students strengths but never challenges their underlying “analogueness”.

Another problem with the meme is that it leads employers to believe that by just recruiting young people they will be gathering a base for change. This is leading to young, tech savy people being placed in leadership positions without them having the *journalistic* skills to make good strategic choices. I know of one example where the publisher is 34, has very strong tech skills but no journalism background and is making decisions that will have a long term impact on the publication. This is a danger to the journalistic development of our industry. A danger that the “digital native” argument perpetuates.

Also, looking around me, the people making a difference seem to be over 30. Have a look at your own area and see if that is also the case for you. I am over 50 and believe (possibly wrongly of course) that my grasp of the shift to digital and my immersion in and understanding of the process by far outstrips many (if not most) of the so called natives. This is not to say that there are not many under thirty doing great things in journalism, just that they are not doing them because they are under thirty

Its not an age thing. Its a curiosity thing. Which makes me a bit sad that so few journalists get it. Curiosity should be our stock-in-trade.