Digitized youth: Fact or glorified myth?

Who and what defines what a generation stands for? I often ask myself why generations are named as they are. “Baby Boomers”, “Generation X” and “Generation Y”? Who comes up with these names and why? Today’s youth have been deemed the “Digital Generation” by some. In his article, “Generational Myth: Not all young people are tech-savvy,” Siva Vaidhyanathan refutes this claim by stating that “every class has a handful of people with amazing skills and a large number who can’t deal with computers at all.” He goes on to state that the use of social media sites such as Facebook is due to its functional ease and that most youth do not know how to operate and make use of Hypertext Markup Language, let alone understand how the internet works at a fundamental level. Originally, I wanted to agree. I thought about the contents of his comment and figured he was correct. Then I thought about my own experience with technology and realized that although I can’t make a flashy webpage, I know my way around video editing software and can hold my own using any computer or electronic device. As for my friends, each one of them has some type of talent with technology whether that is editing pictures with Photoshop, using Sound Logic Pro to compose musical tracks or working with computers themselves and understanding every facet of how they work. Most people I know have at least a mild grasp of some type of electronic device or software. Sure, not every single young person uses or relies on technology but if the generalization can’t be made that this is a digital generation, it also cannot be made for the opposite. It may be a generalization but this is, indeed, a digital generation.