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Digitalization and the arrival of new eras have allowed human beings to advance by leaps and bounds. The new generations learn faster and in other ways and this is due to the easy access to information they have. For this reason, categories are created where each of the groups of human beings in the different technological eras are enclosed, confronting them with their different ages. Analyzing the digital generation is key, and gives us a broad overview of this phenomenon that applies to all of us.
Internet and the new generations
The emergence of the Internet created a vast, new and revolutionary network that encompasses more and more functions every day. It facilitates and extends the possibilities of a new form of communication, leading to what is now known as the digital era. This implies a development and a distinction between people who are connected and those who are not. Isidro Catela wrote a book with the aim of understanding the keys to the digital era. He was especially concerned about the lack of knowledge he had when it came to educating his children, who spend hours connected to the Internet.
This is due to what he calls the “digital divide”. Due to the generation gap, parents who are gradually learning the new technologies, do not know how to deal with the education of their children who are digital natives. This distance and generational change is not the same as before, which only affected the clothing or speech of adolescents. A real rupture has taken place, a singularity, an event that changes things in such a way that there is no turning back.
Reference is made to the arrival and rapid spread of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century. The new generations behave, think and process information very differently from their predecessors. Thinking patterns are no longer the same. Currently, any student, whatever the course, spends more time in front of a screen than in front of a book. Moreover, in Spain, 60 percent of the population watches TV while using the computer.
Technological impact
There are many intermediate levels between indifference, voluntary digital fasting and hikikomori. This refers to the addictive and pathological use of new technologies. When Catela says to change its name to “bunker generation”, this is because depending on the degree of addiction, young people may not leave the room.
The latest studies on the influence of new technologies on young people refer to the aforementioned addictions. However, they also refer to the psychological changes that are developing or, rather, accentuating. For example, attention deficit disorder; a study of 1,400 children between 4 and 10 years of age, i.e. the digital native generations, has shown that there has been a 40% increase in the number of cases. This in comparison with the generations of twenty years older.
This is due to the fact that, because the new generations are born with new technologies, these lead them to the acceleration of time and to want everything at the moment. When they have to perform a task of concentration that requires more time than normal (such as studying, doing exercises) they are not able to stay long.
Concentrating too much on a single task is contrary to the lifestyle they are focused on. In fact, it is also clear that when a young child is bored or doesn’t have what he wants, he starts crying. Immediately most parents give them their cell phone or turn on the TV to distract them. This behavior and this new way of educating means that children do not learn to live with boredom or not to be constantly distracted.
Building an identity through the Internet
There are studies that determine to what extent the Internet influences the creation of personalities in digital natives. For Roxana Morduchowicz, “at present, the social life of young people takes place between two spheres; the virtual/online, in the links they establish in cyberspace, and the real/offline in the world of their face-to-face relationships”.
His study confirms that, contrary to popular belief, new technologies do not isolate young people, but are a new form of socialization where they create their own networks through the Internet, and establish blogs or chat rooms as their channels of information, communication and interact
The conclusion is that this new youth sociability, which involves adolescent identity and their social life through new forms of communication, is very important throughout their adolescence, and that they are also positive in a way, since they offer them alternative channels to the traditional ones: school, cafeterias, parties, etc.
For most teenagers, digital media is the place where they can give free rein to their identities, to their way of being. For them, according to their perception, it is a space that belongs to them. In addition, other experts on the subject and scholars on the influence of these new media in the digital generation, such as Garcia Canclini, also support the position that the Internet does not limit the relationship between digital youth, arguing that decisions that were previously taken later, such as family independence, have now been advanced because new technologies allow young people to see a more distant horizon earlier.
Psychology and Technology
Morduchowicz (2012) says that “The absence of physical image and the annulment of the corporal dimension allow adolescents to talk about themselves with less inhibition, with greater authenticity and avoiding the face-to-face and the evaluative judgment of their parents, because the Internet generates in them new sensations of freedom and autonomy, which they rarely experience in other spheres of their daily life.
Somehow, young people feel that there are no limitations on the web; it is possibly the only space where they feel truly independent. For this reason, it is becoming increasingly clear that a new youth culture is being created, where young people are developing new ways of studying, having fun, etc. Relationships that used to take place in movie theaters, arcades, bars, discos, among many others, are increasingly taking place in blogs or social networks.
Thus supporting Morduchowicz’s theory, who, as we have seen, argues that the new technologies do not deprive young people of relationships or isolate them, but rather have generated a new way of communicating and relating between people. In fact, there are now many tools available to relate to others.
In conclusion, new media and technologies are not mutually exclusive but complementary. Although the boundaries between offline and online are not very well defined by teenagers, because they enter and leave both universes very easily, and sometimes these two realities overlap, they can be in the virtual world and still be connected to the real one. Other times, even though they are in the real universe, they tend to always have an open connection with the virtual one.
The professional and the technological revolution
For TECH Technological University, this new-age boom is so important that it devotes a large part of its efforts to strengthening its students in this approach. To this end, it has designed a variety of specialized programs, such as the Master’s Degree in Marketing Management and Political Communication and the Master’s Degree in Cultural Journalism en Periodismo Cultural, clear examples of its Faculty of Communication.
However, for those professionals interested in exploring new technologies and how they are applied to the field of journalism and communication, there is no doubt that the best professional option is the Master’s Degree in Multimedia Journalism.
