Engaging youth in digital transformation

BitDepth#1393

MARK LYNDERSAY

ON WEDNESDAY, the Portulans Institute hosted a webinar on youth and digital transformation that tapped into their recent 2022 Network Readiness Index publication.

The subject struck a resonant chord with me. I teach a class to university-level students that often reveals a surprising lack of understanding of open internet protocols and techniques.

In one recent instance, students had difficulty sending me a universal resource locator (URL) to a webpage they had been asked to create. Several links resolved to general service addresses, with no way to find their specific page.

Rafael Escalona Reynoso, CEO and secretary to the board of directors of the institute, noted that changes in the employment and work landscape have accelerated under pandemic restrictions.

"The future of work will be defined by digital natives, who will demand changes in workspaces, prioritising collaboration and flexibility," Reynoso said.

"The number of digital entrepreneurs and creators is increasing. Gig and flexible work is also on the rise, allowing for more location independent employment.

"Digital natives operate in a more collaborative and less hierarchical manner in the office workplace. This flexible work environment is further supported by the emergence of gig work.

"To fully leverage the potential of new generations to create value in those environments in which they feel comfortable, public and private organisations should encourage the involvement of young people in conversations about how they work and communicate."

Reynoso noted that by as early as 2025, half of all employees will need reskilling because of the adoption of new technologies.

At least a third of these new, essential skills will include technical competencies that are not regarded as crucial in today's job environment.

Alexandre Le Voci Sayad, co-chair of the International Steering Committee, UNESCO Media and Information Literacy Alliance, warned that digital natives may have fluency in navigation of digital realms, but may not have developed the ethical skills necessary to do so accountably.

"Digital natives are also naive in their exploration of the internet," he said.

"Media and internet literacy are umbrella descriptions, but there needs to be an analytical response in that measurement. How is the formal education system engaging with media and information literacy? It needs to be lifelong learning. Public policy plays a big factor in ensuring that this becomes part of the national learning process.

"The perception is that digital natives are more comfortable with giving up privacy to access the benefits," said Mariam Chaduneli, senior policy associate at Portulans. Chaduneli knows what she is talking about. A casual search on her unique name turns up presences on Facebook, Tik Tok, LinkedIn and Instagram, each offering a range of online personas.

"A Pew Research Centre study has shown that more than 60 per cent of young people, mostly teenagers, apply very specific filters to control who can see their information," she said.

"Less than six per cent have their first and last names publicly visible on their social accounts. Seventy per cent of millennials are concerned about how private and government institutions make use of their private data.

"This is despite more than 60 per cent of them saying that they have not received any formal online safety training. Digital natives are not as careless with their data as you might be tempted to think initially. They want more agency over how other people see them on social media platforms."

How will these youthful digital natives – who are used to projecting their presence in images, video and opinion online – engage with the formal and hierarchical systems of governance that continue to run the world?

"If we want to talk to young people about becoming co-leaders of digital transformation, we need to talk to them about how to become more entrepreneurial, how to become decision-makers," said Chaduleni.

"[Show them] how they can create and work with business processes that drive digital transformation beyond their specific countries and locations. If we want to create a policy, we need to start by talking to the people who will be the beneficiaries of this policy, identifying their needs and talking to them about how they would address their need if they were decision-makers.

"A lot of the time, the assistance you get from the government or the private sector is not really what you need and useful information gets lost in translation."

Mark Lyndersay is the editor of technewstt.com. An expanded version of this column can be found there.