Am I really a Digital Native?

Blogging is a new thing for me, although it has been around for a while. I’m on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn but I haven’t yet made it to blogging. Perhaps because there are so many bloggers out there and I wouldn’t know what to write, or maybe it is just that I haven’t got around to it yet. Anyway the fact is that I am starting now, with thanks to Bournemouth University and my Digital Communications Strategy unit.

I am, in Marc Prenskys terms, a ‘Digital Native’. Prensky invented this term as a way to describe people born after 1980 who are growing up in this digital world. Many people, especially born after 1990 that grow up around this technology explosion don’t know much else.

All people born before this are ‘Digital Immigrants’ who try to learn and keep up with the massive increase in digital technology. Without the advantage of growing up surrounded by digital technology these people have to make a conscious effort to learn the techniques to use these digital products.

Everything ‘Digital Natives’ know about the world and the way we interact through it has everything to do with new media and going digital technology. Everyone I know has a laptop or access to one with internet and knows how to use most of the programmes on them. They all own a mobile phone; mostly the latest trends of Blackberry’s or an Apple iphone.

However, although my friends all use modern technologies is this enough to class us ‘Digital Natives’? Are we blogging, Tweeting and communicating online as much as we are thought to? Everyone that I know around my age has Facebook, but not many Tweet or write blogs. Does this mean we are frauds? Zoe Handley discusses this in her Oxford University blog http://oupeltglobalblog.com/2011/01/20/digital-natives-fact-or-fiction/ ‘Digital Natives’: Fact or Fiction? Her argument and many of the comments are interesting to look at as she points out that students “... are not the most frequent users of technology, rather 35-44 year olds are.” (Bayne and Ross, 2007). So in this case we must be frauds! The Digital Immigrants know more about the new digital era than the Digital Natives which goes against Prensky’s argument completely!

Looking at Lara Mulady’s blog http://deepbluedenmark.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/no-such-thing-as-a-digital-native/ I can see that we are just taking advantage of the benefits of growing up in this era. We don’t have to re-learn everything but we learn as we grow up, being introduced to more and more digital information every day. So can there be a hybrid? I think there should be another word that describes the true stage that young people are at. Some are more advanced and can be labeled ‘Digital Natives’, but I think that the rest of us are, in my terms, ‘Digital Evolvers’.