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Technology is widely developing all across to the world. New ideas and gadgets are brought out to this digital era very recurrently. All generations are ensured to improve their knowledge of technology to stay current in this new technical world. Technology is widespread in most people’s daily life and having a suitable digital literacy is required for the uses of technology. The findings from the blog will articulate if older generations do have less digital literacy than the current generation.

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Digital literacy is ‘to delineate those that emphasize mastery of ideas and insist on careful evaluation of information and intelligent analysis and synthesis, from those that provide lists of specific skills and techniques that are seen as necessary for qualifying as digitally literate’ (Lankshear and Knobel, 2007). This meaning implies that to be classed as digitally literate, one would need to show the accurate knowledge and skills to pass as being digitally literate. These skills would include technical skills in different technological features. Having basic skills to allow using technology in daily life would suggest that the person would have digital literacy however if someone was not capable to perform tasks using technology then that person would have less digital knowledge. Some do not use or know about technology as a whole, therefore they would be classed as digitally illiterate.

The origin of the term digital literacy was brought out by Paul Gilster 1997. Gilster thought deeply on the topic of digital literacy. His ideas included that digital literacy is not all about the skills you have. ‘Rather, he explained it quite generally, as an ability to understand and to use information from a variety of digital sources and regarded it simply as literacy in the digital age (Bawden, 2008). This suggests that, for humans to develop in this technical age they would need to have a certain amount of digital literacy. As technology is becoming fundamental and essential to use in schools, work and general daily, humans are being made to adapt to the technical age.

‘Health Education England (HEE) defines digital literacy(-ies) as: The capabilities that fit someone for living, learning, working, participating and thriving in a digital society (NHS) 2018). Health education helps people who have low digital literacy in the U.K to help them to achieve jobs and work. Many people who are not in work and are from struggling backgrounds do not have the privileges of having a good digital literacy. This is especially regarding the older generation. Times have developed a lot since when the older generation used to go to school and technology has changed immensely, therefore if the person is from a struggling background they are not going to be able to show the level of digital literacy employers are looking for.

Mark Prensky’s idea of the digital divide may also be the reason as to why digital literacy exists. This is due to fact that Prensky talks about digital immigrants and digital natives. The older generation would fit into the immigrant sector, as they need to adapt to the current generation who will be classed as the natives. This then creates illiteracy in technology as the older generation need to adapt and broaden their knowledge for the current generation.

My question for you:
How would you define the term digital literacies?

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Comparison between the older generation and current generation:

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Comparison between the older generation and current generation:

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To gather my findings for the comparison of the two different generations with their knowledge of technology, I conducted two informal interviews. These interviews were centred on one main question which was, ‘do you think you have more digital knowledge than the opposite generation.’ The broadness of the question allowed my participants to really interact and go into great depth with their answers. My indication of using one question to compare both sides of the argument facilitated me to achieve answers in which, supplemented each participant to talk about their own experiences thoroughly.

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Interview with participant from older generation (voice recording): 

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Interview with participant from older generation (voice recording): 

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Interview with participant from older generation:

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Interview with participant from older generation:

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This interview consisted of the argument from the older generation. The 41-year-old participant spoke a lot about his own experiences working in a computer store. An advantage was brought to the participant’s behalf as technology was frequently in their environment however, this does then indicate that the older generation to take an interest and have digital knowledge, as computer shops have to stay with the current generations technological era. Also, most of the people that work in the participant’s workplace are of older age and they are all current with the latest technology. That participant also proclaimed how he assists are his children with technical matters, which expresses that the children that are of the current age have less digital literacy in aspects where the participant from the older generation would have more digital literacy in.

On the other hand, the participant also debates about how customers of the same age as him that do come to his store have no digital literacy. The customers come into the store with very limited knowledge on technology and seek knowledge from the staff. This highlights that; there are two different images towards the older generation having a good amount of digital literacy or having a limited amount of digital literacy. Therefore, it all depends on the person themselves of how they want to educate themselves with technology provided.

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Interview with participant from current generation (voice recording): 

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Interview with participant from current generation (voice recording): 

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Interview with participant from current generation: 

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Interview with participant from current generation: 

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The participant in this interview was of the current generation as he is 19 years of age. He also spoke about his own experience from family life to his job. This was an advantage as, both the participants spoke about similar topics and so it was easier to compare the two participants opinions to each other. Firstly, the participant begins to mention how he uses the latest technology and also how he supports his family whilst using technology. He especially assists his parent, which was dissimilar to the previous participant as he was the one to help his family. Moreover, he also goes onto state how his job has heavily influenced with technology and those from the younger generation were sometimes capable to carry out the technology that the older generation was not capable of doing. However, he also makes a claim which stated, that the older generation prefers human contact which implies that they would much rather not educate themselves of technology as they could believe that they might lose that human contact that would feel nurturing to them.

On the contrary, the participant also talks about how he feels he is not that digitally literate. The participant states that there are some aspects to technology where he has zero knowledge about. This indicates that there are many features to technology and some are not used in the daily life of others. Therefore, one will not have knowledge on this feature however, that does not mean to say that they have no digital literacy because that person could be highly literate on a different feature to technology.

My question for you:
Do you believe you are digitally literate?

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Benefits and limitations of digital literacy:

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Benefits and limitations of digital literacy:

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Digital literacies are useful in many ways. Having knowledge of technology can assist people in their daily life and give you life skills needed to work, or to carry out daily tasks. It is beneficial for the older generation to have knowledge within technology to keep up with the current generation. ‘ A recent iPhone, right, has thousands of more times computing power than an Osbourne Executive “portable” computer from 1982. Such an improvement is an example of Moore’s law in action (Chandler, 2013). This shows the impact of how much technology is developing and how quickly it has developed. In this day and age, technology is all around, therefore to have adequate knowledge of technology is highly beneficial.

Human contact can be disrupted with regard to digital literacy. This is because, with everyone having knowledge of technology, humans will get used to only using technology. There will be no need for human interaction as we are all knowledgeable enough to resource to something quicker. For example, when needing to find an answer to question the primary resource most people with digital literacy will go to the Internet. This is due to technology being fast and efficient.

My question for you:
Would you ask google for an answer to a question or a person?

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CRAP detection is a process introduced by Howard Rheingold. He came up with this idea to prevent users from gathering information from unreliable websites. Using CRAP detection also makes you more aware of the websites that should not be used. Also, users from the current generation may know more about CRAP detection, as it is an innovative new idea that recently just came out. Users of the older generation may not be wise in this area, as they may not know about CRAP detection. Mainly users of the older generation who have a suitable digital literacy would know about CRAP detection.

My question for you:
Do you think CRAP detection is useful?

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E-safety is highly important because making sure people are safe on the Internet, allows the Internet to be less harmful and dangerous. The older generation does have a disadvantage towards E-safety as users from the current generation gain a lot of advice from schools on how they should stay safe on the Internet. Childnet is an organisation, which is developed to help the current generation when it comes to being safe online. Most organisation do concern the current generation and that is a disadvantage for the older generation.

My question for you:
How much do you know about E-safety?

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Digital literacies are coherent in both the generations. From conducting my own research, I came to finalise that, the ones who want to seek knowledge about technology would have a suitable amount of digital literacy and the ones that do not want to seek knowledge are less digitally literate. Older generation may seem to have less digital knowledge however, this is only due to the fact that the current generation are brought up with all the technology and the older generation are having to learn for themselves.

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Colin Lanksher and Micheal Knobel. 2007. Digital Literacies. [ONLINE] Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=doVQq67wWSwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=digital+literacy&ots=h4U9eq9D3p&sig=Xv0rmRhvayPzxtsoq0xtWoOX4RA#v=onepage&q=digital%20literacy&f=false. [Accessed 4 January 2019].

David Bowden. 2008. Origins and Concepts of Digital Literacies. [ONLINE] Available at: http://pages.ucsd.edu/~bgoldfarb/comt109w10/reading/Lankshear-Knobel_et_al-DigitalLiteracies.pdf#page=19. [Accessed 4 January 2019].

Anon, Meridian: A Middle School Computer Technologies Journal. Nc State University.

Health Education England. 2019. Digital literacy | Health Education England. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.hee.nhs.uk/our-work/digital-literacy. [Accessed 074January 2019].

MIT News. 2019. How to predict the progress of technology | MIT News. [ONLINE] Available at: http://news.mit.edu/2013/how-to-predict-the-progress-of-technology-0306. [Accessed 04 January 2019].

Childnet. 2019. Childnet - Childnet . [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.childnet.com. [Accessed 07 January 2019].