Digital Native Teens: Growing Up on the 21st Century Internet
Digital native children—21st-century teenagers who grew up with guidance from the internet—developed a far broader perspective than what their local communities could provide them.
Let’s dive into a unique and special subset of teenagers who grew up alongside the wild yet calm, misleading yet knowledgeable world of the internet.
As a child who grew up locked at the center of China— far beyond the ocean line where new information lies— opportunities and modernization here are limited. We won't celebrate Western holidays at all; Eastern holidays just mean having a meal and being filial with our parents and grandparents.
Being far away from technical expertise and technology advancements doesn’t mean being disconnected from the world nor the internet, you may say. Glad you asked: the Great Firewall of China took care of that, blocking most global news and outside information. Local Chinese media often presents a single perspective of the world, and diversity is nearly nonexistent. Despite this, the intranet online communities seemed to satisfy what most people wanted in terms of entertainment and emotional connection.
Yet, despite this challenging landscape within China, the Internet still granted a small group of people the ability to grow beyond what the local community can provide them with. As long as you know what you're looking for, you can find workarounds for the Great Firewall with just a few web searches. Then, we will be able to connect with people from all around the globe, learn from the world's greatest educators, and gain access to the latest information on technology advancements.
Me personally, I learned about the game Minecraft when I was 8. The game at that time was gaining popularity worldwide, but still hard to find communities within China playing it, especially because it requires a fee upfront - which defies the Asian way of doing things free to play, even though this upfront fee can improve the user experience much more, and means less buggy and less advertising within the game. Again, we are isolated.
The Chinese educational system promotes "follow the order" and "work harder, not smarter." However, I personally found myself the opposite of both of these, and struggled to discover my belonging.
The game to me is an escape from the testing world we're in China. Here within Minecraft's realm, we have the freedom to create and build everything we can ever dream of. And apparently it's been proven that Minecraft fosters children's creativity and collaboration skills - both of which are not welcomed in a Chinese institution, which made me even more of an outcast.
Yet, I loved the game. And very soon it pulled me through a portal for international communication and discovery. By the age of 9, I'm already playing and talking with people from around the globe, despite my childish and unnatural English skill, I made friends and built relations with such a digital community. They provided me with insights on what the world outside of our local city looks like, and how culturally different and diverse the human population can be.
Later on, my friends within Minecraft brought me onto Discord and YouTube, now always my go-to choice for entertainment, vastly differs from the platforms like Youku and Bilibili which my classmates, friends, and basically everyone here are using.
This relation and habit of going online onto the internet in search for a full-fledged of perspectives followed me throughout my teenage years. I'm a student with an interest in Computing, but never gained much opportunity to learn within my community - the technology here is falling behind, and my school was still using Windows XP in 2019.
Until, I found that YouTube can be used to watch more than just Minecraft videos - well, that surely is a hard thing to realize, I guess. Each video on computing I've watched presents me with a brand-new perspective of the world and computer itself. They led me to Google and StackOverflow, where I can find more resources and expand on my knowledge.
Soon, I started making my own projects - web servers, ad blockers, chat bots, etc... - something so rare that you'll almost never see in a normal middle school with a test-based education system in China.
I'm an anomaly. That one weird person within a classroom doing fancy stuff that nobody understands. I float away and make hundreds of sketches of ideas during class, because that test explanation never really inspires me.
And of course, I later even redefined the education by connecting the dots and knowledge I've learned from the world's bests by finding critical security vulnerabilities of my own high school's door access system and reporting the bug to school officials. People are, well, more than shocked, I shall say.
Unintentionally, I built my kingdom of self-learning and lifelong learning skills through the Internet. A skill that has been proven very helpful and important to learning and future outcomes.
One time when I was doom scrolling a friend's posts on my phone, I saw a really interesting keyword that I didn’t know - “Does anyone want to go to HSYLC this summer?" I was intrigued, and my online search skill that I've trained throughout the years of learning computing served me the best. That year, I got accepted into HSYLC - one of Harvard's largest events in China, and HWeek - where I got the chance of going to Boston and studying at Harvard for a week.
I finally found similar-minded people and realized my place and where I belong. The last string of decisions was placed on studying abroad in the autumn of grade 11.
Surely, the internet can do awful things and hurt people, but so does everything else. For me, this opportunity of being alive in a digital age might be the best thing that has ever happened to me. I have gained more opportunities and seen a bigger world than what my local bubble can ever provide me with.
Reflecting back on my journey, I appreciate every minute of it.