What does it mean to be a digital native?

• Most think kids as digital natives are smart and savvy as they know how to use the Net to learn. While some may fit this description, Sherry pants a picture of children tethered by a mobil device to friends and family in a constant state of waiting to be interrupted. Becoming independent is buffered by constant access to parents and by parents constant access. Some feel they made a mistake teaching parents how to text-message. Parents sometime panic when calls and messages are not answered.
• Children develop strong emotional needs to call or text. What isn’t cultivated is the ability to be alone and reflect on one’s emotions in private. What would have been a pathology in the past has become the norm. They have to construct identities via things like their Facebook profiles and most have many Internet twins as they put their coolest face forward. At college application time, they create a different identity for each application. All the while, eye contact and body language are missing.

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