Generation Edge

Defining the start and endpoint of any generation is always fuzzy, but most experts seem to define today’s K-12 students as part of Generation Edge, children born perhaps as early as the mid-90s, though others hold the beginning of this generation until 2000. Generation Edge has seen the US job and housing markets collapse and has witnessed the political turmoil in our increasingly divided country, while at the same time been raised with amazing technologies commonplace and integral to daily life. How will these forces and experiences influence their generational traits?

Ian Pierpoint and Caroline Fletcher suggest that Gen-Edge kids are individual and resourceful, valuing critical thinking. They are realistic about and even skeptical of the world and their futures in it. To Gen-Edge technology is simply another tool taken for granted, and can thus be questioned and critiqued. They understand the drawbacks of internet oversharing, and prefer to keep some things private. As witnesses to institutional collapse in their formative years, they mock and challenge the status quo.

Do I see these traits in my students? Mostly, I’d say yes. My students don’t seem to take their futures for granted. Amy Lynch agrees, calling Gen Z (an alternate name for Generation Edge) pragmatic. I’ve seen this exact trait in many students. I feel that when I was a teen, my peers either had future careers in mind based on interests and ideals, or were keeping their plans open because so many things appealed to them. Many of my students today, when asked, ask me in return what will make good money, or more often than that, will ask me what jobs I expect to be in high demand in 5 or 10 years.

Lynch also agrees as to Gen-Edge’s desire for a certain amount of privacy, due to their understanding of the way information spreads on the internet. This trait was also mentioned in the video, as a contrast to Millenials' embrace of oversharing on social networks. I am starting to see this in many of my students. While I’ve been distressed students who post identifying information on Twitter and other social media sites, most of my student do seem to restrict their social networking to people they know in real life. Most are constantly connected to their peer and friends through technology, and tweet and snapchat each other all day long. I do not see them avoiding oversharing within this network, so I suppose they value privacy from the broader world, but don't seem to value privacy as much among their immediate peers.

Strangely, to Pierpont and Fletcher’s point of Gen-Edge mocking and challenging the status quo, Lynch counters that most members of Generation Edge are polite, avoiding confrontation and stressing consensus and civil behavior. Who is correct? I see an interesting combination of both in my students. They certainly question the status quo, constantly asking why things must be done, and why can’t they do it another way? But ultimately, I’ve seen that they don’t much want to rock the boat. If their classmates disagree, they often back down. If they do agree, they don’t seem to think it’s worth the effort to do anything about it. They like to question, but action is almost always lacking. I don't see petitions, editorials in the school paper, or protests for change. Ultimately, I would never label my students as valuing politeness, but I do think they value consensus and lack of genuine conflict.

I am also not convinced by Pierpont and Fletcher’s claim that Generation Edge tends to value critical thinking. In fact, I feel that critical thinking is a skill many members of this generation lack. I think that this ties directly in with their reliance on technology. Generation Edge students are what Marc Prensky called “digital natives,” meaning they grew up with and are entirely comfortable with technologies such as personal computers and the internet. Members of Generation Edge are said to be especially adept at multitasking. Sarah Fudin, in Gen Z & What does it mean in your classroom?, mentions that these students believe they work best when simultaneously listening to music, watching television, talking, texting, or browsing the internet. I’ve seen this in many of my students, who request to listen to music while working, and who tell me they do their homework while watching television and communicating with friends. I frequently have to ask students to remove earbuds during class discussion, as they try to sneakily keep one earbud in. Kim Lear, as quoted in Generation Edge: An Early Look at America’s Youngest Generation, suggests that this should really be termed “switch tasking,” as students are in fact rapidly switching their attention between the different tasks. However, Fudin also points out that many mental health experts disagree that these students are truly being as effective as they think, and mentions “acquired attention deficit disorder,’ as coined by Harvard Medical School’s John Ratey. I agree with Dr. Ratey. The students I’ve observed “multitasking” don’t seem to be absorbing material as well as they would if deeply focused on one task, but the problem seems to be that they have extreme difficulty achieving such deep focus. By splitting their focus, they feel comfortable enough to do work, but deep, sustained concentration eludes them.

How does this multitasking lead to a lack of critical thinking? Dr. Ratey believes that the more we rely on technology to deal with details, such as spell checking or maintaining a list of phone numbers, the less our brain is able to focus on detail. Prensky stresses that digital natives are used to “twitch speed,” instant gratification, and constant, prompt feedback. He fails to see that this leads to a decrease in the ability to reflect and to analyze things “with any depth and nuance," a skill vitally important to critical thinking. This is what I see in my own students. They can parrot information back, exactly as presented to them, but when parameters are modified even slightly, or they are asked to dig deeper, students are often stumped, and become immediately uncomfortable.

Also mentioned by Sarah Fudin as a drawback of digital natives’ reliance on technology, many of them have no idea how to be critical of information, or to judge reliability of a source. I see this over and over with my own students, who have no tools to distinguish good information on the internet from biased or even false information.

The final trait mentioned in Generation Edge: An Early Look at America’s Youngest Generation is that Gen-Edgers have a competitive spirit, due to being raised by blunt Gen-Xers and thanks to shrinking job prospects. I don’t see this in my students at all. In fact, the biggest generational difference that I’ve noticed among my students not mentioned in either the video or the articles is actually something of the opposite: my students seem to have a strange relationship to other people’s work and ideas. A lot of my students think nothing of copying work from another student, or getting answers and even papers from the internet. I’ve discussed this at length both with students and with other teachers, and it’s become obvious that these students don’t think of sharing information as cheating. They seem to view information and ideas as collective, and anything they can get their hands on as fair game. My guess is that this is a direct response to games and the internet. What do you do if you’re stuck in a video game? All but the most hardcore gamers go online to the hundreds of walkthroughs, strategy guides, or even cheat sites. Why struggle through a tough question when you could pop it into Google and find someone who’s already done the work? Additionally, the internet is famously negligent about accreditation. News stories are shamelessly re-posted on website after website with the bylines removed. Entire websites exist that do nothing but aggregate other content and present it in snippets, again often with little credit to the originators. Unfortunately, I think this has resulted in Generation Edge’s lack of understanding of intellectual property, the need to acknowledge sources, and the benefits of doing one’s own work.

Finally, I must state that when I read both part one and two of Prensky’s article, I definitely recognized the characteristics he attributes to digital natives (a preference for multitasking, instant gratification, graphics before text, and games over serious work) as present in my own students, but I disagree with his conclusions. Prensky believes we must shift all instruction to be fun for students, and prefers game-based learning. He argues that “it generally isn’t that Digital Natives can’t pay attention, it’s that they choose not to,” citing time spent focusing on video games and other engaging tasks. Personally, I find this argument unconvincing. Sustained attention to an interactive, fast paced activity such as a video game does not require the same deep focus that reading a textbook would. The video game constantly provides new stimuli, while a textbook does not. It is certainly true that if we delivered all content as video games, and removed the “boring” textbooks, students wouldn’t need such deep focus at all, and perhaps they would learn what we asked of them. And I do believe we must offer instruction in ways that engage students and that allow them to succeed. But as Prensky points out repeatedly, the human brain is amazingly plastic. I think it's our responsibility as teachers to help our students regain the ability to think critically and to focus deeply. I think Sarah Fudin's suggestions are absolutely correct, that we must take advantage of Generation Edge's technological and visual abilities to engage them in learning, while also helping to "train students to focus their attention on a single task that has depth and complexity" and aiding in the development of critical thinking skills, including as applies to their use of technology and online sources.