About youth
Two quick links before going offline for the week-end:
A Belgium study reveals a divide among the 16-25. Most of them are good at chatting, watching videos and downloading, but some remain unable to accomplish the online tasks that “society expects from them”, like filling out an online form.
The conclusions of your study undermine some ideas about the generation of “digital natives”, which is generally believed to master the new information and communication technologies.
This is not quite the case. We wanted to examine the case of so-called “off-line” youth, which have virtually no use of Internet and computer tools. In reality, only a minority of 16-25 years are cut off from these tools. But for some of them, it is very difficult to cross the bridge between “their” Internet world - chat, downloading or listening to music and videos online - and the usage that society expects of them, starting with their employers.
It would thus be a second “digital divide”?
Yes, but it does not separate those who have Web access and those who do not have access. It is a gap between a world of entertainment and a larger universe. The skills deployed in the two worlds are not the same: to chat and lay out a document do not use the same skills, for example. During the study, facilitators of employment centers have explained that some young people took fright at an electronic registration form, while they spend maybe ten hours a day on the Web to listen music or talking with their friends.
I also did a quick interview (in French) for the radio of a local college here in Brittany. A fun and interesting discussion touching on innovation and education. It is one of these “expat” moment, for the Swiss I’m French, for the French I’m Swiss ;)
Entrepreneur suisse et co-créateur de la conférence internationale Lift. Il nous donne son point vue sur l’évolution des comportements sociaux liés à l’utilisation et au développement des nouvelles technologies.
