Youth, Technology, and the Hidden Curriculum of the 21st Century

Recognizing that youth are socialized into specific digital practices in unequal ways, this paper asserts that the way technology and new literacies are positioned in schools can potentially marginalize youth of lower social class positions. It argues that students who are not equipped with the economic, cultural, and social resources necessary to acquire digital practices valued by the knowledge economy may not be able to participate agentively in networked publics, nor gain the literacies for the new work order. By focusing on technology as a tool rather than as an object of study, schools can fail to equip less-resourced youth with the competences that will help them acquire cultural and social capital. The fetishization of educational technology and the lack of structured digital literacy instruction can constitute a hidden curriculum that provides a semblance of being technologically integrated, but ultimately reproduces social inequalities.