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“And it is one in which the distinction between the public and the private, especially in the world of social media, is increasingly blurred. “There has been a fundamental shift in how our world operates,” Gasser noted. The conversation highlighted students’ difficulty in navigating a complex digital environment in which sharing personal information serves as the currency that binds participants in the ecosystem, while that same currency threatens their privacy in unexpected and troublesome ways. Students shared that the internet is, for them, at once a catalyst for learning, creative ideation, and exploration, and simultaneously an environment rife with the potential for mindless distraction and lower pursuits. “What do we do when we tweet or snap? How is it affecting our tolerance for boredom?” inquired one student. This fall, Palfrey, Gasser, and their research team discussed the book and the issues it explores at forums at Harvard Law School and Phillips Academy, Andover.Īt Philips Academy, during an interactive session, students brought up questions related to the challenges and joys of living in the digital age. “In a world filled with troubling events and phenomena, the question of how we can build a better world for young people using this technology we call the internet, is one that unites.” “The biggest takeaway is that there is a sense of shared responsibility,” Gasser observed. In both editions, they were driven to answer the question: How do we assure the benefits and advantages of the digital age and minimize the negative externalities? This, they acknowledged, is no easy feat-to which individuals across the generational spectrum can attest. Though Palfrey and Gasser have often joked that their book “will be obsolete the moment it is published,” they emphasize that it is critical to study how the digital age is shaping society from the ground up, beginning with the children, teenagers, and young adults who know no other paradigm. The new edition builds upon recent research conducted by the Berkman Klein Center’s Youth and Media project and includes insights from the Berkman Klein-UNICEF Digitally Connected network, as well as many other collaborators and colleagues from around the globe. “It was about learning from what others had done, as there is no one field that has the lock on how young people grow up ‘digital,’ and we sought out interdisciplinary teams who approached the issue from different perspectives.” “From the beginning, the book aimed to integrate and learn from the existing scholarship on how young people were growing up and interacting in the digital age,” explained Palfrey. Gallen in Switzerland and Palfrey was a professor at HLS, vice dean for library and information resources, and headed the then Berkman Center for Internet & Society. The writing and research that led to the first edition grew as a collaboration across continents, when Gasser was teaching at the faculty of law of the University of St. ’03, Harvard Law School professor of practice and executive director of the Berkman Klein Center, published “ Born Digital: How Children Grow Up in a Digital Age,” an expansion of their celebrated 2008 book “ Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives.” Credit: Alba Sophia Hancock Urs Gasser and John Palfrey onstage at a recent event celebrating the release of an updated version of their book, ‘Born Digital.’Įarlier this year, John Palfrey ’01, head of school at Phillips Academy and co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, and Urs Gasser LL.M.