The construction of cultural capital two digital neonatives

generation Z, digitalization and school performance

Abstract

This work addresses the construction of the cultural capital of digital neonates. In the last twenty years, the intensification of the digitalization process of life has reduced the legitimacy of the cultural capital transmitted by parents and endorsed by schools. However, fragments of the most distinctive cultural capital, incorporated in first and second childhood, are used by digital neonates to achieve good school performance. Digital newborns who belong to families with higher income and education build a domestic technological infrastructure responsible for the advent of informational-digital-technological capital, useful for obtaining a good performance in exams such as ENEM. These two factors – the appropriation of fragments of cultural capital originating from family and school and the incorporation of new informational-digital-technological capital – translate into cognitive skills that are decisive for the good academic performance of this generation, especially those who belong to families with higher income and education.