Being comfortable with digital isn’t a generational issue - it’s an attitudinal one
Matthew Eltringham
is editor of the BBC College of Journalism website. Twitter: @mattsays
I try very hard not to point out the irony of her position when she can be found most evenings hunched over Mumsnet, or when she gets lost in the car and calls me up for directions that I then supply from my smartphone app.
She is of course entitled to her inconsistencies, but figures suggest she is in the minority in both camps.
Ofcom research from this year suggests that nearly six in 10 UK adults (62%) now use a smartphone, an increase from 54% in 2012. This increase is driven by 25-34s and 45-54s, and those aged 65-74 are almost twice as likely to use a smartphone now compared to 2012 (20% versus 12%).
Other figures suggest the 45-54 age bracket is the fastest growing demographic on both Facebook and Google+. Even if that figure is partly driven by parents trying to keep tabs on their offspring, it is the first step in the deconstruction of that tired old cliche that you can only be a ‘digital native’ if you are under 25.
Social media savvy and technical know-how is not a generational issue - it is an attitudinal one.
The idea that ‘I need my seven-year-old to programme my DVD player’ is as appropriate and relevant now as - well - DVD players themselves.
In fact it just isn’t funny anymore. It’s also demeaning and diminishing to suggest adults are incapable of making stuff work or have no role or influence in using them.
And that is even truer of journalism and the media than daily life in general. Some of the best users of social media in journalism that I know have been around the block a bit - just look at Robert Peston, Rory Cellan-Jones, Fleetstreetfox or Caitlin Moran.
They understand that news is a conversation; that stories come from talking to people. In the olden days they had little black books and spent hours in the pubs and bars building contacts.
I’m not arguing that social media replaces those face-to-face contacts - but skills acquired before the advent of Facebook and Twitter can be more easily deployed on these new platforms if they have been developed in the first place elsewhere.
In fact in many ways it’s easier for the likes of Peston et al than it is for their children. Sure, the so-called digital natives may know ‘intuitively’ which buttons to press, or have similarly at their fingertips the latest text-speak and abbreviations. But they don’t always have the same ‘intuitive’ grasp of how to use these platforms journalistically. They can - to an extent - use them personally, but are often rather less adept at using them professionally.
The think-tank Demos produced a fascinating report in 2011 - Truth, Lies and the Internet - hat showed just how inept these digital natives actually are in using the internet.
“Many young people,” the report concluded, “are not careful, discerning users of the internet.
They are unable to find the information they are looking for or trust the first thing they do. They do not apply fact-checks to the information they find. They are unable to recognise bias and propaganda… they are too often influenced by information they should probably discard.”
These digital natives are “very confident users of the internet, but are not particularly competent”. Around a third of 12 to 15-year-olds, for example, believed that if a search engine lists information it must be true.
The report argues that “many parents think that the digital world is alien to them - a mysterious place inhabited by their digital native children. They should not. Offline knowledge and critical thinking skills possessed by parents are of enormous relevance in an online setting too.”
My point precisely.
