Who are digital natives? The Privacy Guarantor responds
Guido Scorza, member of the Guarantor for the protection of personal data: "In reality they don't exist, it's just a negative way of saying it"
ROME – “The ‘digital natives’ do not exist, it is a way of sayingthat has done harm to the management and governance of children’s problems in the digital universe and has persuaded adults that they do not there was a need to act as adults. Furthermore, it convinced children even more that they knew more than adults in the digital dimension and that, therefore, it was not necessary to turn to them”. Thus Guido Scorza, member of the Guarantor for the protection of personal data, during a video interview given to Dire on the occasion of the event ‘The dignity of children in the digital world’, organized in Rome by the S.O.S. Foundation Telefono Azzurro in collaboration with the Embassy of Italy to the Holy Seeand Fondazione Child in view of the National Day for the fight against pedophilia and child pornography.
“DON’T CONFUSE DIGITAL NATIVES WITH DIGITAL ABILITIES”
“In reality – explained the lawyer Scorza – we must not confuse being ‘digital natives’ with having digital skills, such as ‘thumbing’ or swiping the finger on the screen of a smartphone or tablet like children do. Monkeys also have this type of ability, as demonstrated by hundreds of thousands of videos on all platforms, and are acquired simply by habit and also because those platforms are scientifically designed, so that they can be monkey-proof or child-proof, which does absolutely the same thing.” However, it is “completely” different, continuedScorza, to define oneself as a ‘digital native’ in the sense of “knowing what happens behind that screen, how the internet works, why one content is offered to us and another is not or what interfaces are capable of generating dependency in the little ones Well, children don’t know this and can’t imagine it.”
“PARENTS’ TASK TO TELL WHAT HAPPENS BEHIND THE SCREEN”< /strong>
It is therefore “definitely” the task of parents, teachers and institutions “to tell the little ones what happens behind that screen, exactly as we teach them to cross the street. No one is born ‘digital native’, fortunately people are not ‘amphibians’, they know how to live in the physical dimension and only acquire culture, training and the ability to stay afloat in the digital dimension through experience.” Scorza, during his speech, said that he is the father of two little girls and that he himself is scared of the dangers, sometimes even crimes, that can hide on the internet.
WHAT TOOLS DO PARENTS HAVE TO DEFEND THEIR CHILDREN?
“First of all, those same tools that understandably scare us – the member of the Guarantor for the protection of personal data, Scorza, responded to Dire – also offer adults the possibility, I am referring for example to the parental control tools, to be adults, that is, to be parents in the digital dimension, to establish a maximum time limit for the use of the various services, to establish boundaries reasonably to be respected in the minor’s freedom to move in the digital dimension ” . And finally, there is the most important tool of all: “The parent can obviously always remind the little one that if it is written somewhere that that social network is reserved, as it normally is for those who are at least 13 years old, they must simply wait, no one dies. He will enjoy that experience more – concluded the lawyer Scorza – when he has all the skills necessary to benefit from it”.