Digital native

The term digital native describes a person who has grown up in the digital age, rather than having acquired familiarity with digital systems as an adult, as a digital immigrant. Both terms were used as early as 1996 as part of the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. They are often used to describe the digital gap in terms of the ability of technological use among people born from 1980 onward and those born before. The term digital native describes a person who has grown up in the digital age, rather than having acquired familiarity with digital systems as an adult, as a digital immigrant. Both terms were used as early as 1996 as part of the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. They are often used to describe the digital gap in terms of the ability of technological use among people born from 1980 onward and those born before. Digital native and digital immigrant were popularized by education consultant Marc Prensky in his 2001 article entitled Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, in which he relates the contemporary decline in American education to educators' failure to understand the needs of modern students. His article posited that 'the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decade of the 20th century' had changed the way students think and process information, making it difficult for them to excel academically using the outdated teaching methods of the day. In other words, children raised in a digital, media-saturated world, require a media-rich learning environment to hold their attention, and Prensky dubbed these children 'digital natives'. Globally, 30 percent of the population born between 1988 and 1998 had used the Internet for over five years as of 2013. Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Marc Prensky defines the term 'digital native' and applies it to a new group of students enrolling in educational establishments referring to the young generation as 'native speakers' of the digital language of computers, videos, video games, social media and other sites on the internet. Contextually, his ideas were introduced after a decade of worry over increased diagnosis of children with ADD and ADHD, which itself turned out to be largely overblown. Prensky did not strictly define the digital native in his 2001 article, but it was later, arbitrarily, applied to children born after 1980, because computer bulletin board systems and Usenet were already in use at the time. The idea became popular among educators and parents, whose children fell within Prensky's definition of a digital native, and has since been embraced as an effective marketing tool. It is important to note that Prensky's original paper was not a scientific one, and that no empirical data exists to support his claims. However, the concept has been widely addressed in the academic literature since, mainly in education research, but also in health research. Prensky has since abandoned his digital native metaphor in favor 'digital wisdom'. More recently, the Digital Visitor and Resident idea has been proposed as an alternative to understanding the various ways individuals engage with digital technology. It is also argued that digital native and digital immigrant are labels that oversimplify the classification scheme and that there are categories that can be considered 'undetermined' based from the framework of the previous assignations. The critique of Prensky's conceptualization has resulted in further refinement of the terms. For instance, digital natives have been further classified into three: the avoiders, minimalists, and enthusiastic participants. The avoiders are those who do not depend on technological devices and use technology minimally while the minimalists make use of the trends, although not as often as the enthusiastic participants. People who were 'born digital', first appeared in a series of presentations by Josh Spear beginning in May 2007. A Digital Native research project is being run jointly by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. A collaborative research project is being run by Hivos, Netherlands and the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society. The Net Generation Encountering e-learning at university project funded by the UK research councils was completed in March 2010. More recently the Museum of Social Media, launched in 2012, has included an exhibition about 'Digital Natives & Friends.' Due to the obvious divide set between digital natives and digital immigrants, sometimes both generations are forced to meet which commonly results in conflicting ideologies of digital technology. The everyday regimen of work-life is becoming more technologically advanced with improved computers in offices, more complicated machinery in industry etc. With technology moving so fast, it is hard for digital immigrants to keep up. This creates conflicts among older supervisors and managers with the increasingly younger workforce. Similarly, parents clash with their children at home over gaming, texting, YouTube, Facebook and other Internet technology issues. Much of the world's Millennials and Generation Z members are digital natives. According to law professor and educator John Palfrey, there may be substantial differences between digital natives and non digital natives, in terms of how people see relationships and institutions and how they access information. In spite of this, the timetable for training young and old on new technology is about the same.