Digital native

This article is about people of the Digital Age. For the Yasutaka Nakata album, see Digital Native (album). For objects of the age, see Born-digital.
A child using a tablet

The term digital native describes a person who has grown up in the information age. The term "digital native" was coined by Marc Prensky, an American writer, speaker and technologist who wrote several articles referencing this subject.[1] This term specifically applied to the generation that grew up in the "digital age," predominantly regarding individuals born after the year 1980,[1][2] namely Millennials, Generation Z, and Generation Alpha. Individuals from these demographic cohorts can consume digital information quickly and comfortably through electronic devices and platforms such as computers, mobile phones, and social media.

Digital natives are distinguished from digital immigrants, people who grew up in a world dominated by print and television because they were born before the advent of the Internet.[3] The digital generation grew up with increased confidence in the technology that they were encircled and engulfed in.[1] This was thanks in part to their predecessors growing interest into a subject that was previously an unknown. Due to their upbringing, this digital generation of youth became fixated on their technologies as it became an ingrained, integral and essential way of life.[1] Prensky concluded that due to the volume of daily interactions with technology, the digital native generation had developed a completely different way of thinking.[2] Though the brains may not have changed physically, pathways and thinking patterns had evolved, and brains had changed to be physiologically different than those of the bygone era.[4] Repeated exposure had helped grow and stimulate certain regions of the brain, while other unused parts of the brain were reduced in size.[3] The terms digital native and digital immigrant are often used to describe the digital generation gap in terms of the ability of technological use among people born after 1980 and those born before.[5] The term digital native is a highly contested concept, being considered by many education researchers as a persistent myth not founded on empirical evidence[6][7] and many argue for a more nuanced approach for understanding the relationship between digital media, learning and youth.

  1. ^ a b c d Selwyn, Neil (5 July 2009). "The digital native – myth and reality". ASLIB Proceedings. 61 (4): 364–379. doi:10.1108/00012530910973776. ProQuest 217758813.
  2. ^ a b Tufts, Debra Roben (2010). Digital adults: Beyond the myth of the digital native generation gap (Thesis). ProQuest 825550299.
  3. ^ a b Prensky, Marc (September 2001). "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part 1". On the Horizon. 9 (5): 1–6. doi:10.1108/10748120110424816. hdl:11323/5915. S2CID 145451571.
  4. ^ Prensky, Marc (November 2001). "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part 2: Do They Really Think Differently?". On the Horizon. 9 (6): 1–6. doi:10.1108/10748120110424843. S2CID 145201624. ProQuest 214641811.
  5. ^ Zenios, Maria; Ioannou, Eleni (2018). "Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants Revisited: A Case of CALL" (PDF). Learning and Collaboration Technologies. Learning and Teaching. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 10925. pp. 99–110. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-91152-6_8. ISBN 978-3-319-91151-9.
  6. ^ Margaryan, Anoush; Littlejohn, Allison; Vojt, Gabrielle (February 2011). "Are digital natives a myth or reality? University students' use of digital technologies". Computers & Education. 56 (2): 429–440. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2010.09.004.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Bennett Maton Kervin 2008 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).