Wise and Insightful Observations of Challenges Facing All of Us in the Digital Age.
I was really surprised to see the mediocre rating of this book until I read a bunch of the one star reviews and realized they were from college students and "digital natives" who were upset with the way they were portrayed in this book. It reminded me of my own ire reading the conventional wisdom about my generation X, however from the animosity of some of the younger reviewers, you'd think they were getting called slackers and underachievers.

Quite the contrary, Palfrey and Gasser speak quite admiringly of the young people they call "Digital Natives," though I can understand why they would be irritated by a couple of lawyers more than twice their age summarizing up the commonly believed faults of a generation of people in an attempt to explain the psychology of millions of people. That might be where this book is a bit faulty. Surely, there is no way to accurately cover an up and coming generation of people in a 360-some page book, especially when not all the book is about Digital Natives, but about global society in general going digital.

This fault in the premise of the book is ironically also a strength of the book and a reason why I'd recommend this book as a good general read for anyone who's interested in getting a very non-sensational and well reasoned view of issues that we face as a society going deeper into the digital age. There are few books like this that I like because I have lived so much of what these sort of books cover. At thirtysomething, I'm a digital elder... not because I'm older than the "digital natives," but because I hopped online in the 80's and instantly adopted the early Internet as my second home. My quarter century in the digital world has given me a very long view of how these technologies affect society and are in turn affected by society.

In reading this book that's supposed to help me understand people who could be my children, I actually saw my own digital journey reflected in their writings. This is a wise book and a very well written and well informed book. The only other weakness in the book that I can identify other than being too broad in the scope of their subject is in the parts of the book in which they venture off into making suggestions for helping digital natives and society in general deal with the challenges of the digital age. The suggestions are too generic to be useful and could sound quite patronizing if you see yourself as the subject of these prescriptions.

For the faults I've identified in this book, I'd actually give it a 4-star rating, but I'm bumping my rating to counterbalance those folks who've been handing out one star ratings to vent.

Very Misleading
I was very interested in this book, being born in 1987 I was expecting some insight into myself and the direction my future may be going. Having a newborn daughter I was especially looking forward to seeing what sort of life may be in store for her. Upon reading this book I was severely disappointed. In agreeance with the other reviewers it describes 16 y/o girls mostly and I read the book thinking more of my much younger sister rather than my peers. I feel this book gives innacurate insight in the world of a "Digital Native" and would not recomend this book to anyone.

I'm Thankful that I Wasn't born Digital
The internet, amazing as it may seem, was invented less than fifty years ago and entered the average home less than twenty years ago. Despite its short existence, it has made massive changes in the lives of many people, particularly the young. Any informed person could name a few. Old fogies view the internet as something to assist and augment real life; young 'uns think that the internet is real life. Old folks believe that certain things should be private; the young think it's fine to put intimate conversations on Facebook. The old think that intellectual life and research requires engaging a variety of sources; the young think Wikipedia is good enough.

Palfrey and Gasser get the main changes, though if anything they understate some of them. In their vocabulary, "Digital Natives" are those born after 1980 who grew up immersed in an online environment. They acknowledge that not all young people fall into this category, and warn about a "digital divide" that separates those with the skills for navigating the internet from those without. That, however, is a side note. The book as a whole is overwhelmingly optimistic, and seemingly loath to consider that there might be any real, serious problems emerging from the internet culture.

Typical of Palfrey and Gasser's approach is a chapter on "Learners". The internet certainly has arrived in classrooms, with students bringing their computers to school and online research supplanting trips to the library. Palfrey and Gasser acknowledge that this may be bringing some problems with it, such as shorter attention spans. Yet somehow they slide around this and arrive at the assured conclusion that digital natives will learn just fine. They insist that "there is no evidence" that the current generation has suffered at all in the field of education. Actually there's plenty of evidence. In his excellent book The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerlein presents results from standardized tests that document declining scores in history, grammar, math, science, and many other areas. Moreover, schools with more technology deliver worse results, not better.

Palfrey and Gasser keep returning to a four-level hierarchy for problem-solving. The first level is digital natives themselves, then parents and teachers, then the larger culture, and lastly the law. In most chapters they address how all of these levels might function, but they're typically heavy on platitudes and light on specifics. For instance, they remark that teachers could learn how to use technology more effectively in the classroom. Well sure, teachers could, but there's no reason to believe that teachers will, especially given the sclerotic functions of our education system. Even if it happened, it might not happen fast enough to given today's children a decent education.

A similar sense of naive optimism pervades most of the other chapters. A chapter entitled "Activists" celebrates a few high-profile cases of young people passionately pursuing great causes online. There's no reason to believe that these few represent any major movement. The fact that voter turnout among the young keeps hitting new lows is not mentioned. Similarly, a chapter about entrepreneurs has a handful of business success stories, but nothing to give much hope that our kids will be competitive in the world economy on a grand scale. A chapter about the media points out a change in how we consume information. In the old days we read a newspaper article and that was it. Digital natives, on the other hand, can "engage with the material" by posting comments on websites. Fine and good, but anyone who actually reads the comments at online newspaper articles knows that they're overwhelmingly immature and stupid.

"Born Digital" is a bad book with some good aspects. It does provide an introduction to some important topics, particularly for those who know little about online culture. However, its attempts at in-depth analysis are marred by looking forward through rosy-colored glasses. The authors seem to approach the topic with a determination to have a positive outlook, no matter what the facts are. For a better look at the digital future, try Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology or perhaps just We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism.

Failed expectations
My first son was born in 1991 and was exposed to all digital solutions since his age allowed him to access them.
Hence, hearing about this concept of Digital Natives who might have developed peculiar capabilities thanks to their practice with the new digital world, I am very interested to understand why my son can be so slow to answer a question, so lazy reading a book, so inattentive while jumping from a subject to another, however successful at school, sports and with friends.
Then I found this book from John Palfrey and Urs Gasser with a subtitle promising to answer exactly my question.
You could say I set a too big expectation for this book. May be. But that was my perspective when reading and while writing down this comment.
From my perspective Born Digital left my expectation totally unsatisfied.
The content is organized in very smartly titled chapters where several aspects of new opportunities provided by Internet are verbosely described from the perspective of a 16 years old girl. Sometimes also from an adult perspective. But never ever making a consideration about which are the implications into the mindset of a young individual whose development happened completely inside this environment.

I believe an sample abstract could be meaningful.
From chapter 5. Creators, page 124:

Characteristics of the first generation to grow up online
Many kids under the age of 15 have no idea what a typewriter is. Why would they be familiar with such an outmoded, archaic tool? They are members of "the first generation of digital natives." Internet and law experts John Palfrey and Urs Gasser offer an accessible, informed and concerned investigation into cyberculture. Although they often indulge in platitudes and generalizations, they bring a new, useful focus to the discussion. They delve into such important issues as privacy and Internet safety, and they examine how these issues affect young people, in particular. Of necessity with this kind of structure, the authors repeat some of the same points, such as the glut of information and the interconnected nature of online life - but they do so to show how these core factors affect different areas. getAbstract recommends this book to lawmakers, hiring managers, teachers and parents who want to understand life in the cyberculture.