IS THERE A DIGITAL GENERATION?
David Buckingham
Published in David Buckingham and Rebekah Willett (eds.) Digital Generations:
Children, Young People and New Media (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2006)
The title of this book reflects a kind of generational rhetoric that often
characterises discussions of the use and impact of so-called ‘new’ media. Young
people are frequently described as a ‘digital generation’, a generation defined in
and through its experience of digital computer technology. This rhetoric can be
found in popular commentary in fields as diverse as commerce, government,
education and youth activism. Thus, the electronics company Panasonic is
currently advertising its new ‘e.wear’ MP3 players as providing ‘digital music for a
digital generation’; the US Department of Commerce speaks about ‘preparing the
digital generation for the age of innovation’ (Mehlman, 2003); educationalist
Seymour Papert (1996) writes of the ‘digital generation gap’ between parents and
children; while the journalist J.D. Lasica (2002) seeks to defend young people
from what he sees as ‘Hollywood’s war against the digital generation’.
Elsewhere, we encounter ‘the Nintendo generation’ (Green and Bigum, 1993),
‘the Playstation generation’ (Blair, 2004) and the ‘net generation’ (Tapscott,
1998); as well as related constructions such as ‘cyberkids’ (Holloway and
Valentine, 2003), ‘bionic children’ (Newsweek, 2003) and even ‘cyborg babies’
(Davis-Floyd and Dumit, 1998). Meanwhile in Japan, there has been
considerable discussion of the ‘thumb generation’ – young people who have
apparently developed a new dexterity in their thumbs as a result of their use of
games consoles and mobile phones (Brooke, 2002).
Of course, the notion of a ‘generation gap’ has been around for decades, if not
centuries. It typically emerges as a consequence of adults’ fears about the
escalating pace of social change, and their anxieties about a loss of continuity
with the past. The idea of a ‘digital generation’ merely connects these fears and
anxieties to technology: it suggests that something has fundamentally and
irrevocably changed, and that this change is somehow produced by technology.
In this opening chapter, I want to suggest that we should approach these issues
with a degree of scepticism. Rather than falling back on easy rhetoric, there are
several fundamental questions we need to address. Is there indeed a digital
generation - or even digital generations, in the plural? And if there is, how do we
define it, does it matter, and in what ways?
The social history of generations
In their book Generations, Culture and Society, June Edmunds and Bryan Turner
(2002) provide the basis for a sociological and historical theory of generations.
They define a generation as ‘an age cohort that comes to have social
significance by virtue of constituting itself as a cultural identity’ (2002: 7). As this
implies, generations are defined both historically and culturally. Most simply, a
generation is a cohort of individuals born within a particular time-frame; although,
as Edmunds and Turner suggest, a generation may also be defined by its
relationship to a particular traumatic event, such as a world war or the great
depression or the rise of fascism. (It may be that the attack on the US World
Trade Centre in 2001, and the ensuing reconfiguration of world politics, will come
to be seen as a similarly defining moment.) However, this process of definition is
also a cultural issue; it is a matter of how the potential members of a generation
constitute themselves as having a shared identity. It is possible, following this
argument, that some generations may be more self-conscious or self-reflexive
than others, and hence come to claim greater social significance: the ‘Sixties
generation’ (at least in Western countries) might be seen in this way. More
subjectively, this argument also implies that individuals’ generational
identifications are malleable and fluid; and so we may identify with a generation
of which we are not strictly members in terms of biological age.
This theory of the construction of generations raises broader questions about
structure and agency that are central to social theory. Karl Mannheim
(1952/1979), for example, argues that the definition of generations is partly a
matter of the particular life chances that are available to people by virtue of when
they happened to be born; but it is also a question of how people respond to
those life chances, how they interpret their given historical circumstances, and
the shared meanings they attribute to their position. Mannheim argues that
different ‘units’ within a given generation are likely to define their situation – and
hence to behave as members of a generation (to ‘act their age’, perhaps) – in
different ways. Interestingly, he also notes that, as the pace of social change
accelerates, the boundaries between generations are likely to become blurred.
Similarly, Pierre Bourdieu (1993) argues that generations are socially and
culturally defined and produced. Different generations will have different tastes,
orientations, beliefs and dispositions (or ‘habitus’); and while these are partly a
result of the historical and economic circumstances in which people were born,
they also emerge through struggles between generations over cultural and
economic resources. As this implies, generations are naturally occurring
phenomena, which emerge simply as a result of the passing of time; but
generations also produce themselves, as their members (and, presumably, nonmembers
too) define the meanings of generational membership.
These ideas find many echoes in recent work on the sociology of childhood and
youth. Leena Alanen (2001) uses the notion of ‘generationing’ to describe the
ways in which children and adults assert and jointly construct their differences on
grounds of age. Defining who’s an adult and who’s a child (or a young person)
occurs partly through a continual ‘othering’ – and indeed policing - of those who
are older or younger. This kind of social constructionist view is often criticised for
failing to pay enough attention to biological or developmental differences; but it
does reflect the ways in which the generational order is constantly being
renegotiated. Likewise, in youth research, researchers are now inclined to
conceive of socialisation, not merely as something that adults do to young
people, but as a process in which young people are also active participants. The
notion of ‘self-socialisation’, which has become prominent in youth studies in
Germany (e.g. Fromme et al., 1999), implies that socialisation is something that
young people work to achieve for themselves, among the peer group; while
others have discussed the notion of ‘reverse socialisation’ (Hoikkala, 2004) – the
possibility that young people may socialise their parents to adapt to social
change, not least around technology. Both these ideas reflect a broader rejection
of the notion that the social or generational order is something fixed that is simply
imposed upon passive individuals. In both cases also, the media and consumer
culture have been seen to play a central role in this defining and redefining of
generational differences and identities (for example see Arnett, 1995 and
Johansson, 2004).
Nevertheless, just as in discussions of gender, the study of generational
differences inevitably runs the risk of essentialising those differences. It is worth
recalling here Mannheim’s notion of ‘generational units’, and his argument that a
generation is not necessarily uniform, but that members attribute meaning to
generational experiences in quite different ways. It is also difficult to know where
the distinctions between generations are to be drawn. For example, if we explore
the construction of a popular category such as ‘Generation X’, there is
considerable disagreement about its historical parameters, let alone whether the
term itself actually means anything to the people who are allegedly members of
this generation (Ulrich and Harris, 2003). Which experiences, dispositions or
characteristics do we take to be representative of a generation? Who are the
spokespersons of their generation, and how is their authority established? And
how do we actually identify the boundaries – or even the shared consciousness of
a generation?
These kinds of questions are often at the heart of academic controversies about
the nature of social change. For example, there has been considerable debate
within sociology between Ronald Inglehardt and others about the notion of a
‘post-materialist’ generation (Inglehardt, 1990; Brechin and Kempton, 1994;
Reimer, 1989). Essentially, Inglehardt argues that there has been a generational
shift from ‘materialist’ to ‘post-materialist’ values in the post-War period; yet his
analysis raises difficult theoretical and methodological questions about how we
measure and identify ‘values’, and about the relationship between the values that
people might proclaim or sign up to in a questionnaire and their actual behaviour.
Both within the academy and within popular debate, therefore, the concept of
‘generation’ is complex and contested; and how we define, characterise and
study generations is highly problematic.
Accounting for media and technology
This issue becomes even more complicated when we take account of the
potential role of media and technology in the construction and self-construction of
generations. Within media and cultural studies, age has (somewhat belatedly)
come to join class, ethnicity and gender as a key dimension of social identity; and
in attempting to escape the limitations of normative psychological accounts, there
has been a growing emphasis on how the media – and the ways in which the
media are used - participate in defining the meanings of age differences
(Buckingham, 2000; Jenkins, 1998). As I have noted, sociologists like Edmunds
and Turner (2002) sometimes point to the role of traumatic defining events –
such as wars – in defining generations; and it is possible, at least in principle,
that radical shifts in technology or media might also play a role in this respect.
The Australian cultural theorist Mackenzie Wark (1993), for example, argues that:
‘Generations are not defined by war or depression any more. They are defined
by media culture.’
What is the evidence for such a claim? On one level, we might draw attention to
the role of ‘taste cultures’ among children and young people that serve precisely
to exclude adults, and thereby to assert their own generational distinctiveness.
This is most apparent in the case of specialised areas of popular music and
fashion (Bennett, 1999), but it also occurs around more mainstream media such
as television (Davies et al., 2000). We might also point to the phenomenon of
‘retro’ culture – the periodic revivals of particular musical or fashion styles, or
enthusiasms for cult television shows of earlier decades, which often combine
nostalgia and irony. As these examples imply, media can be used self-reflexively,
as signifiers of generational affiliation.
Of course, the media industries themselves are also busily defining and
reconfiguring generational categories for the purposes of maximising profit. Thus,
it is possible to trace the historical emergence of age-based categories within
marketing discourse and practice. The category of the ‘teenager’ is often seen as
a phenomenon of the post-war consumer boom, which came to prominence in
market research during the 1950s (Abrams, 1959); while Daniel Thomas Cook’s
(2004) history of the children’s clothing industry in the US identifies the gradual
emergence of age-based distinctions, and the construction of new age-defined
categories such as the ‘toddler’ during the 1930s. In more recent years, we have
seen the construction of the ‘tween’ consumer (Willett, 2005), as well as a
proliferation of new age-based marketing categories such as ‘kidults’, ‘middle
youth’, ‘adultescents’ and so on. As in the case of ‘Generation X’, it is possible to
show that, even if these categories were not invented by marketers, they are very
quickly taken up by them as a means of describing and hoping to control what
they perceive as a volatile and unpredictable market.
Beyond this, it could be argued that ‘youth’ has become a symbolic value that
can be marketed to a wide range of audiences – to children aspiring to escape
from the constraints of childhood (as in the marketing of girls’ fashion products
and make-up, for example), and to adults aspiring to recover ‘lost’ values of
youthful energy and rebellion (as in the marketing of much contemporary rock
music). In the increasingly competitive environment of contemporary media, such
distinctions have a growing commercial significance. The term ‘youth’ in
particular invokes a set of symbolic meanings that can refer to fantasy identities
as much as to material possibilities. How old you are - or how old you imagine
yourself to be - is increasingly defined by what you consume, by your relationship
to specific brands and commodities; and youth culture, it would seem, is no
longer just for young people.
Social theorists have suggested that in recent decades, chronological age has
become decoupled from people’s actual life situations; and that the ‘normative
biography’ – or the steady progress of the life-course – has become decentred
(Ziehe, 2005). Even so, children and young people are not passive victims of this
process: they are actively involved in sustaining the distinctions and boundaries
between the generations, even as they may aspire to challenge them. In
exploring the changing meanings of such age-based, generational categories,
therefore, we need to understand how they are actually used by young people –
and indeed, whether they recognise them at all - as well as how they work to
regulate and define the meanings of age differences. And we need to recall that
such categories are not merely discursive, ‘imaginary fictions’: they also have
real material consequences.
Despite these qualifications (and others to be considered in due course), Wark’s
assertion that generations are ‘defined by media culture’ does raise some
interesting empirical questions. Do young people who are growing up with digital
media in fact have a different orientation to the world, a different set of
dispositions or characteristics - or in Bourdieu’s terms, a different habitus? It
should be possible to ask this question without assuming a simple before-andafter
sequence - not least because the dissemination of technology is bound to
be gradual and incremental. It should be possible to address it without
necessarily assuming a form of technological determinism – and to take account
of the fact that technology may reinforce changes that would be happening in any
case. And it should be possible to answer it without having to reduce everything
to age – to acknowledge that there may indeed be differences (for example, to do
with gender, culture and social class) within a given generation. At least in
principle, therefore, it should be possible to posit the existence of a ‘digital
generation’ without recourse to teleology, to determinism, or to essentialism.
The generational hypothesis
Don Tapscott’s book Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation is one
of the best-known and most ambitious arguments in favour of the idea of the
digital generation. Tapscott’s account is based on two sets of binary oppositions,
between technologies (television versus the internet) and between generations
(the ‘baby boomers’ versus the ‘net generation’). He draws clear lines between
the generations, based primarily on birth-rate statistics: the ‘boomers’ were born
between 1946 and 1964, followed by the ‘bust’ (1965-1976) and the ‘boom echo’
(1977-1997). According to Tapscott, the boomers are the ‘television generation’,
who are defined by their relationship with that medium, just as the children of the
boom echo are the ‘net generation’.
Tapscott’s oppositions between these technologies are stark and absolute.
Television is a passive medium, while the net is active; television ‘dumbs down’
its users, while the net raises their intelligence; television broadcasts a singular
view of the world, while the net is democratic and interactive; television isolates,
while the net builds communities; and so on. Just as television is the antithesis of
the net, so the ‘television generation’ is the antithesis of the ‘net generation’. Like
the technology they now control, the values of the ‘television generation’ are
increasingly conservative, ‘hierarchical, inflexible and centralised’. By contrast,
the ‘N-Geners’ are ‘hungry for expression, discovery and their own selfdevelopment’:
they are savvy, self-reliant, analytical, articulate, creative,
inquisitive, accepting of diversity and socially conscious. These generational
differences are seen to be produced by technology, rather than being a result of
other social, historical or cultural forces. Unlike their parents, who are portrayed
as incompetent ‘technophobes’, children are seen to possess an intuitive,
spontaneous relationship with digital technology. ‘For many kids,’ Tapscott
argues, ‘using the new technology is as natural as breathing’ (1998: 40).
Technology is the means of their empowerment – and it will ultimately lead to a
‘generational explosion’.
Growing Up Digital takes the reader through a series of areas – cognition, play,
learning, family, consumption and work. In each case, the argument is essentially
the same: technology offers a new form of empowerment for young people; and
this is producing a generation gap, as the habits and preferences of the older
generation are coming to be superseded. From an academic vantage point, it is
perhaps rather easy to mock these kinds of arguments: they lack scholarly
caution and qualification, and the evidence on which they are based is
unrepresentative and often anecdotal. Tapscott is a management consultant,
entrepreneur and motivational speaker; and as such, academic virtues are likely
only to dilute his appeal. Yet in fact many of his arguments come quite close to
the kinds of ideas that circulate in the discourse of policy-makers – and, I would
suggest, in the academy as well. For this reason, it is worth exploring his claims
more closely.
Tapscott argues that technology produces a wide range of social, psychological
and even political changes. Five key claims are particularly relevant to our
concerns here.
1. First, technology is seen to create new styles of communication and
interaction. Among the ten themes that Tapscott sees as characteristic of webbased
communication, he includes independence and autonomy, emotional and
intellectual openness, innovation, free expression, immediacy, and an
investigative approach. The internet provides new means for constructing
community: it is an active and participatory medium, which is about many-tomany,
distributed communication. These new communities are inclusive, and
require the creation of new kinds of trust. They are about breaking down walls,
and they allow the creation of new kinds of relationships, both in the form of
friendships and new family lifestyles: the internet, Tapscott argues, will give rise
to ‘a new kind of open family’ characterised by equality, dialogue and mutual
trust.
2. Secondly, the internet also produces new styles of playful learning. Unlike the
television generation, the net generation is inquisitive and self-directed in
learning. It is more sceptical and analytical, more inclined towards critical
thinking, and more likely to challenge and question established authorities than
previous generations. Net-based learning is interactive, rather than a matter of
transmission. Where old-style education was teacher-dominated and
authoritarian, digitally based education is non-linear and learner-centred, based
on discovery rather than the delivery of information. The net transforms the
teacher into a facilitator, whose input has to be customised to learners’ needs.
Above all, learning via the internet is ‘fun’: learning is play and play is learning,
and so ‘the net is a place where kids can be kids’. However, this new style of
learning is also particularly appropriate to the so-called ‘knowledge economy’,
and to the new kinds of employment that are emerging there. In this new world,
the old knowledge hierarchies no longer apply, and the working environment is
one of personal networking, innovation and openness.
3. These new conditions of education, work and social life also require new
competencies – or new forms of ‘literacy’. This is apparent to some degree in the
innovative, informal styles of language that are emerging on the internet –
emoticons and so on – and in the changing conventions of language use (or
‘netiquette’). More broadly, however, internet communication is seen to require
and produce new intellectual powers, and even ‘more complex brain structures’:
it results in a kind of accelerated development, and young people who do not
have access to it will be ‘developmentally disadvantaged’. The net generation not
only has different skills in terms of accessing and navigating through information,
it also processes and evaluates information in a radically different way from the
television generation. This new orientation towards information is natural and
spontaneous, rather than learned: it somehow connects with the inherent
condition of childhood.
4. At each of these levels, technology is implicitly seen to have direct
psychological effects. Yet it also has consequences at a more psychic level: it
provides new ways of forming identity, and hence new forms of personhood. For
all the reasons identified above, the net generation is high in self-esteem: the use
of digital media imparts an enhanced sense of efficacy and self-worth, not only
for young people with disabilities, but for all. In the digital world, the child is the
actor. Via the medium of chat, the internet provides opportunities for
experimentation and play with identity, and for the adoption or construction of
multiple selves. By offering communication with different aspects of the self, it
enables young people to relate to the world and to others in more powerful ways.
5. Finally, the internet is also seen to be leading to the emergence of a new kind
of politics. The net itself is distributed and democratic: it is a collectively shared,
non-hierarchical delivery system that serves as ‘a medium for social awakening’.
Its effects on offline behaviour are also inherently democratising. According to
Tapscott, the net generation is more tolerant, more globally-oriented, more
inclined to exercise social and civic responsibility, and to respect the
environment. Technology is radicalising them, just as television has ultimately led
the baby boomers to accept the status quo.
Another story
In many ways, these are familiar arguments. To a greater or lesser extent, they
are shared by many popular and academic commentators on the impact of digital
media. They place a generational ‘spin’ on what has come to be called the
‘Californian ideology’ – the form of ‘cyber-libertarianism’ favoured not just by
internet activists, but also (perhaps paradoxically) by many marketing gurus
(Barbrook and Cameron, 1996). Despite the evident pleasures of wishful
thinking, it is important to re-state some of the fundamental limitations of such
arguments.
Tapscott’s approach is clearly based on a form of technological determinism.
From this perspective, technology is seen to emerge from a neutral process of
scientific research and development, rather than from the interplay of complex
social, economic and political forces. And it is then seen to have effects - to bring
about social, psychological and political changes - irrespective of the ways in
which it is used, and of the social contexts and processes into which it enters.
Technology is therefore regarded as an autonomous force that is somehow
independent of human society, and acts upon it from outside. This view connects
with a familiar rhetoric about the ‘information society’ (or the ‘knowledge
economy’), which similarly appears to attribute a determining power to some
disembodied force (‘information’). This perspective has been widely challenged.
Raymond Williams (1974), for example, criticises the reductionism of this
approach, and its tendency to reify technology, as though it existed
independently of human activity - although he also challenges the opposite view,
that technology is entirely shaped by pre-existing social, economic and political
forces (see also Chandler, 1995; and Webster, 1995). Meanwhile, the notion of
the ‘information society’ also seems to neglect the role of human agency, and the
complex, gradual processes through which technologies are integrated within
existing social activities and arrangements (May, 2002).
These kinds of ideas carry a particular emotional charge when it comes to the
discussion of childhood. The combination of ‘childhood’ and ‘technology’ serves
as a powerful focus for much broader hopes and fears about social change: and
for all those who believe, like Tapscott, that technology is liberating and
empowering children, there are many others who see it as destroying or
betraying the essence of childhood (e.g. Cordes and Miller, 2002; Postman,
1983). Yet the fundamental question here is how we understand the causal
relationships that are at stake. As I have argued elsewhere (Buckingham, 2000,
2005), contemporary developments in technology do present new risks and
opportunities for children. But these developments can only be adequately
understood in the light of other changes – for example, in the political economy of
children’s culture, the social and cultural policies and practices that regulate and
define childhood, and the everyday social realities of children’s lives. These latter
changes themselves can also be overstated, and frequently are; but in any case,
it makes little sense to consider them in isolation from each other.
This technologically determinist stance means that there are many issues and
phenomena that Tapscott and other such technology ‘boosters’ are bound to
ignore. He neglects the fundamental continuities and inter-dependencies
between new media and the ‘old’ media (such as television) that he so despises
– continuities that exist at the level of form and content, as well as in terms of
economics. A longer historical view clearly shows that old and new technologies
often come to co-exist: particularly in the area of media, the advent of a new
technology may change the functions or uses of old technologies, but it rarely
completely displaces them. Tapscott’s approach is also bound to ignore what one
can only call the banality of much new media use. Recent studies (e.g. Facer et
al., 2003; Holloway and Valentine, 2003; Livingstone and Bober, 2005) suggest
that most children’s everyday uses of the internet are characterised not by
spectacular forms of innovation and creativity, but by relatively mundane forms of
information retrieval. What most children are doing on the internet is visiting fan
websites, downloading music and movies, e-mailing or chatting with friends, and
shopping (or at least window-shopping). Technology offers them different ways of
communicating with each other, or pursuing specialist hobbies and interests, as
compared with ‘offline’ methods; but the differences can easily be overstated.
Given his relentless optimism, Tapscott inevitably has to ignore the downside of
the internet – the undemocratic tendencies of many online ‘communities’; the
limited nature of much so-called digital learning; and the grinding tedium of much
technologically-driven work. One of the most troubling issues here is the
continuing ‘digital divide’ – the gap between the technology rich and the
technology poor, both within and between societies. In common with other
technology enthusiasts, Tapscott believes that this is a temporary phenomenon,
and that the technology poor will eventually catch up - although this is obviously
to assume that the early adopters will stay where they are. It is also to assume –
as Tapscott very clearly does – that the market is a neutral mechanism, and that
it functions simply by giving individuals what they need. The possibility that
technology might be used to exploit young people economically (see Center for
Media Education, 1997), or indeed that the market might not provide equally for
all, does not enter the picture. The complacency of this argument is at least
compounded by the view that children growing up without access to such
technology – for example, in developing countries - are likely to be
‘developmentally disadvantaged’.
The technologically-empowered ‘cyberkids’ of the popular imagination may
indeed exist; but even if they do, they are in a minority, and they are untypical of
young people in general. One could even argue that for most young people,
technology is a relatively marginal concern. Very few are interested in technology
in its own right; and most are simply concerned about what they can use it for.
But, like other forms of marketing rhetoric, the discourse of the ‘digital generation’
is precisely an attempt to construct the object of which it purports to speak. It
represents not a description of what children or young people actually are, but a
set of imperatives about what they should be or what they need to become.
Conclusion
So is there a digital generation? I would argue that, to a greater or lesser extent,
technological change affects us all, adults included. Yet the consequences of
technology depend crucially on how we use technology, and what we use it for;
and these things are subject to a considerable degree of social variation within
age groups as well as between them. There may indeed be broad systematic
differences between what adults do with technology and what young people do
with it; although it is important to note that the meanings and uses of technology
are so variable, that we need some quite fine distinctions in order to capture what
is happening here. For example, computer games are frequently identified as a
children’s or young people’s medium; but in fact research suggests that the
average age of game players is now thirty (Entertainment Software Association,
2005). Of course, young people may well be playing different types of games
from adults, or even playing the same games in different ways; but in exploring
this phenomenon in any detail, we will almost certainly need to jettison any
essentialist assumptions about the differences between children and adults.
My aim in this introductory chapter has been to puncture some of the rhetoric and
hype that typically surrounds discussions of young people’s relationships with
digital technology. This is, frankly, a fairly easy task. What is more difficult is to
conduct and analyse the research that will genuinely further our understanding of
these issues – and that is something I leave to the diverse contributions that
follow. Even so, I hope that this discussion has raised some important caveats
and questions that will inform your reading of the book as a whole. As I have
suggested, the notion of a ‘generation’ is more complex than it might appear at
first sight. To identify a generation, set boundaries around it, and characterise or
define it, is far from being a straightforward matter – particularly if we wish to
avoid undue generalisation, and to acknowledge the significance of other social
differences. The notion of a ‘digital’ generation – a generation defined through its
relationship with a particular technology or medium – clearly runs the risk of
attributing an all-powerful role to technology. This is not to imply that, on the
contrary, technology is merely an outcome or function of other social processes;
but it is to suggest that it needs to be seen in the context of other social,
economic and political developments. From this perspective, it also becomes
easier to avoid the rhetoric of fundamental and irreversible change that often
characterises the discussion of children and technology.
The chapters that follow take different stances on these issues, and address
quite diverse concerns. Some of the cross-cutting themes are drawn out in our
introductory remarks at the start of each section. However, all the contributors
share a commitment to rigorous empirical investigation – and it is this
commitment that needs to come to the fore in future debates about the role of
digital technology in children’s lives.
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