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Cited by 332

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 22 of the 22 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Debunking the ‘digital native’: beyond digital apartheid, towards digital democracy

Open access
Brown, C., Czerniewicz, L.·2010·Journal of Computer Assisted Learning

Abstract

This paper interrogates the currently pervasive discourse of the ‘net generation’ finding the concept of the ‘digital native’ especially problematic, both empirically and conceptually. We draw on a research project of South African higher education students' access to and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to show that age is not a determining factor in students' digital lives; rather, their familiarity and experience using ICTs is more relevant. We also demonstrate that the notion of a generation of ‘digital natives’ is inaccurate: those with such attributes are effectively a digital elite. Instead of a new net generation growing up to replace an older analogue generation, there is a deepening digital divide in South Africa characterized not by age but by access and opportunity; indeed, digital apartheid is alive and well. We suggest that the possibility for digital democracy does exist in the form of a mobile society which is not age specific, and which is ubiquitous. Finally, we propose redefining the concepts ‘digital’, ‘net’, ‘native’, and ‘generation’ in favour of reclaiming the term ‘digitizen’.

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Crossref · 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00369.x

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Metadata

Authors
Brown, C., & Czerniewicz, L.
Venue
Journal of Computer Assisted Learning
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2010-09-15
Volume
26
Issue
5
Pages
357-369
ISSN
  • 0266-4909 (ISSN-L)
  • 1365-2729
OpenAlex
W2105609257
Cited by
332
References
22
FWCI
35.06
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Debunking the ‘digital native’: beyond digital apartheid, towards digital democracy. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00369.x
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Brown, C., & Czerniewicz, L. (2010). Debunking the ‘digital native’: beyond digital apartheid, towards digital democracy. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00369.x

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.