Digital Native Chilensis: The Young people, of South of the Internet

Abstract

It is undeniable that the Internet has a capital importance in the contemporary society. In the new technological paradigm, known as the Information Age, the relevance of the network is equivalent to that of oil in the Industrial Age.

Although we can dissent of the prediction done by Nicholas Negroponte in 1995, in its famous book “Being Digital”, with respect to which the digital divide would be translated in a subject, net, generational, expressed in the dichotomy: young person-rich versus old-poor men. However, this author (1995) guessed right in his theory of the greater facility of the young people towards the new technologies. For that reason, the Internet is dominated by young people.

The appearance of Wena Naty, a video uploaded to the network (with the explicit consent of their protagonists) in which a 14 year old girl practiced oral sex to a partner in a public square, is the most dramatic demonstration of the use and abuse that young Chileans make new technologies.

The present article reviews data collected on the use of technologies in Chile (INJUV 2002, Godoy 2006 y PNUD 2006). As well as it analyzes collected own data from the investigations of Carcamo “Percepción del tiempo  y de la motivación ante tareas de búsqueda de información y conferencias de texto (Chat) mediadas por computador en estudiantes secundarios de Chile” and Nesbet (2007), “Usos de la mensajería instantánea en estudiantes secundarios de Valdivia.”