Call it the Abe Simpson principle. The cartoon patriarch, after her son Homer told him he wasn’t “with her”, replied: “I was with him, but then they changed what It era. Now the one I’m with is not Itand stuff It it seems strange and scary to me. Then he warned his son about him: “It will happen to you.”
Grandpa Abe was right. When the term “digital native” was coined, I was one of them. I am part of the cohort that grew up in the information age. I have a distant memory of my mother’s computer – a bulky white thing that played solitaire, minesweeper, and a handful of MS-DOS games – which for a moment seemed like an intruder in our house, but I can’t really remember a moment before that. would arrive.
I remember installing our broadband, which made me one of the few people in my social circle who didn’t have to hear the dreaded words, “Get off MSN Messenger, I have to make a phone call.”
However, the Abe Simpson principle has come through for me. I recently participated in a closed-door conversation with experts and policy makers about AI and the challenges it poses to regulators. One participant noted that while the challenge was “too big” for the current cohort of regulators, it would be solved by the growing generation of digital natives.
I listened, expecting to find out something about me and why I was in a good position to fix this. Instead I realized that I am no longer a digital native. Also, what is now a digital native 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 widespread. It now seems to mean that you have grown up in an era where you have 24/7 access to the internet whether you like it or not, and everything from far-fetched conspiracy to violent pornography is piped into your social media feed.
In one sense, this is completely surprising. While I’ve had a mobile device since my early teens and a smartphone shortly thereafter, I grew up at a time when my Internet access was easily monitored, something my peers and I considered a given. We had a better intuitive understanding of technology than our parents, but they still held the controls and in most cases control of the only computer.
The meaning of being a digital native has changed dramatically because the definition of “digital” has changed as well. And it will continue to do so: a child entering school for the first time will now only have a semi-formed memory of the world without AI.
As a result, the idea of digital nativity is becoming less valuable, rather than more valuable. There was a point where the divide between a digital native and someone who wasn’t was stark enough to be worthwhile. But even the gap between me — someone who has used a computer for as long as she can remember — and someone who, by dint of being only five years younger, had a smartphone since her early teens, is already big enough. The gap between the two of us and someone who grew up with a tablet from birth is even bigger.
And it’s not just the hardware that’s changing. The software is too. Modern technology is both easier and harder to use. As a child, I was able to set up my PlayStation without help – today would have ended up with a crying baby and a broken game console. But other developments, not least in artificial intelligence, mean that a whole range of once-complex coding tasks are now within the reach of people who don’t know their Ascii from their Cobol.
So the notion that an incoming wave of digital natives will be able to better regulate, solve thorny political issues, or avoid the dangers we wrestle with is alarming wishful thinking. The first generation of digital native parents is also the first generation to give their children smartphones from an early age, a decision today often criticized by teachers and experts. (And, I think, one that’s unlikely to happen again.)
Digital natives may have been more successful in navigating the e-commerce world. But there is little evidence that we are any better at regulating these industries, perhaps because, just like those before us, our success lies in building a new world that we ourselves do not fully understand.
The confusion that comes with periods of very rapid technological change that outpaces generational know-how is not over. Whether you’re looking for ideas for new products or better ways to leverage existing technologies, the next wave of digital natives could help. But if you see them as the solution to looming regulatory or political problems, remember that the Abe Simpson Rule comes to all of us sooner rather than later.
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