Interview | Danah Boyd: 'People looked at me like I was an alien' | Technology | The Guardian
But there's one cliche in particular that annoys Danah Boyd: the "digital native".When you think about it, it makes sense. Why would they be different? Perhaps young people spend more time in the online world, and perhaps they are more invested in it, but they still have to figure out the rules, same as everyone else.
"There's nothing native about young people's engagement with technology," she says, adamantly.
The Microsoft researcher, who has made a career from studying the way younger people use the web, doesn't think much of the widely held assumption that children are innately better at coping with the web or negotiating the hurdles of digital life. Instead, she suggests, they're pretty much like everyone else.
"Young people are learning, they're learning about the social world around them," she says. "The social world around them today has mediated technologies, thus in order to learn about the social world they're learning about the mediated technologies..."
