Soal Tujuan penulis, fungsi paragraf, dan sikap UTBK-SNBT (LBE-07)

Let's Retire the "Digital Native"

(1) In 2001, the writer Marc Prensky described young people who had grown up surrounded by computers, video games, and the internet as "digital natives." The phrase caught on quickly, and more than two decades later it is still heard in school meetings, job advertisements, and newspaper columns. It is time we stopped using it.

(2) The problem is not that the label is unkind. It is that it quietly turns a fact about age into a claim about skill. Growing up with a smartphone makes a teenager comfortable with apps and quick at typing. It does not, by itself, teach anyone how to check whether a viral video is real, how a search engine ranks its results, or why a free app might be collecting their data. Being familiar with a tool is not the same as understanding it, in the same way that riding in cars every day does not turn someone into a mechanic.

(3) This confusion has real consequences. If teachers assume that their students already know how to judge online sources, they may never teach them to do so. In a survey of 300 first-year students at a university in Kota Rembulan (fictional), most rated their own ability to spot false news as "good" or "very good," yet fewer than a third correctly identified a sponsored article in a short test.

(4) The belief that young people are naturally skilled with technology is, in short, unwarranted. Digital skills are learned, just like reading and arithmetic, and someone has to teach them. Instead of calling students natives, we should treat them as what they are: learners.