In the documentary, Digital Nation, Frontline explores how the digital world affects many
aspects of our 21st century lives, including education, personal interactions, and multi-tasking.
The first section of the Frontline documentary I felt compelled to comment on was the use of
Technology in Schools. This segment really spoke to me. I am an adult student at Penn State
and currently a preschool teacher. I grew up without the internet; email was just becoming a
“thing” when I graduated from high school. Steve Mayer, a history teacher from Chatham, NJ
featured in the documentary states “we adults are immigrants in the world of technology and
our children are natives”. This is such a powerful metaphor. I teach four- and five-year-olds and
they’ve never known a world without the internet, iPads or even smartphones. Steve Mayer
goes on to say, “The world that we’re preparing them for isn’t going to require them to
remember a bunch of information”. I had to replay that a couple of times to let it sink in, but
my own experience as both an adult college student and a teacher in an elementary school
setting reaffirms his statement. The producer of Digital Nation, Rachel Dretzin, drives home this
point when she narrates “it occurred to me that my children’s education may have a different
purpose than mine did”. We technology “immigrants” need to meet our students, the
“natives”, where they are as far as technology is concerned. As an educator, I know this, but I
need to be better about putting this into practice.
The next part of Digital Nation that interested me was the section on relationships, particularly,
the Feed Me Bubbe interviews. The narrator, Douglas Rushkoff, says “Bubbe is using the
internet to simulate the sense of connection that people feel with their own grandmothers”.
Bubbe seems like a sweet lady, she reminds me of my own grandmother, who often showed
love through food. That said, it made me wonder, was/is Bubbe is profiting from these
“simulated” connections? She may not have been, but in a way, she is a precursor to today’s
influencers, and they are most definitely profiting from “virtual” connections. It is their job to
simulate relationships to influence their followers to make a purchase that ultimately benefits
the influencer financially. In my opinion this is a downside to technology. Simulating
relationships, whether it’s grandmother/grandchild, friends, romantic relationships or what
have you, feels disingenuous and to me this is one of the downsides of technology. We lose our
sense of reality when we begin to rely on simulation, and that feels like a scary slippery slope.
The final portion of Digital Nation that I couldn’t help but comment on was the multi-tasking
story at MIT, as I consider myself a multi-tasker. What interested me most was the stark
contrast between the interviews with the MIT professors versus the students. In the interview
with David Jones, Associate Professor at MIT, we learn that he tested his student on obvious
concepts and expected most of them to easily obtain a 100% on the exam, provided they read
the assigned readings and attended his lectures, however, the mean score on the exam was a
75%. He goes on to say, “the students aren’t dumb”, they are hardworking, but they are
distracted by technology tools which makes their studying methods less effective. Professor
Sherry Turkle states the students at MIT are “drinking the Kool-Aid by believing that a multitasking learning environment will serve their best purposes”. During an interview with two
students at the end of the segment, we learn they consider themselves very good multi taskers,
completely capable of doing it and doing it well. With the amount of technology surrounding
us, it is easy to fall victim to multi-tasking, but are any of us really any good at multi-tasking? I
think we all know the answer to this question, but I had confirmation the other night, when I
noticed that my husband and I were watching Netflix while on our phones and trying to have a
conversation. All three activities suffered. Our conversation had gaps, neither one of us knew
exactly what was going on in the show we were watching, and I was texting a friend and my
text messages were making very little sense.
In conclusion, although the documentary Digital Nation was produced and aired in early 2010,
the topics covered are still relevant today. We live in a digital world with technology and
technological devices all around us. There are many pros and cons to being a digital nation.