What do you say to people who insist they can’t relate to the digital world?
My response to those who feel like they are too far out of the game to ever engage in this brave new world is to say that’s entirely false. In fact, it’s very important, particularly to the extent that you are teaching young people as an educator or teaching them as a parent or spending time with them as a peer in any way. You do have to engage with technology to some extent in order to have a meaningful relationship. Very often, these young people, these digital natives, will be glad to be your guides. You don’t have to be up to speed with the latest technologies, and it’s not that you have to turn over your life to a digitally mediated environment or way of living completely. It’s simply that there may be interesting things that these young people can show you, and there may be interesting things that you can do with these technologies.