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Digital native
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. This term was specifically applied to the generation that grew up in the "digital age", predominantly regarding individuals born from 1980 onwards, namely Millennials, Generation Z, and Generation Alpha. It proposes that individuals from these demographic cohorts can quickly and comfortably locate, consume and send digital information through electronic devices and platforms such as computers, mobile phones, and social media.
The ideas underlying the term "digital natives" says that they 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. Supposedly, the digital generation grew up with increased confidence in the technology that they were encircled and in which they were engulfed. Proponents of this term believe that this occurred in part because of their predecessors growing interest in a subject that was previously unknown and that, 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. Prensky concluded that due to the volume of daily interactions with technology, the digital native generation had developed a completely different way of thinking. They further believe that though the brains of these youths may not have changed physically, pathways and thinking patterns had evolved and their brains had changed to be physiologically different than those of the bygone era. Repeated exposure had helped grow and stimulate certain regions of the brain, while other unused parts of the brain were reduced in size.
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. The term digital native is a highly contested concept, being considered by many education researchers as a persistent myth not founded on empirical evidence, and many argue for a more nuanced approach in understanding the relationship between digital media, learning and youth.
Native–immigrant analogy terms, referring to age groups' relationships with and understanding of the Internet, were used as early as 1995 by John Perry Barlow in an interview, and used again in 1996 as part of the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.
The specific terms 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". He also goes on to say that Digital Natives have "spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers and videogames, digital music players, videocams, cell phones and all other toys and tools of the digital age".
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[clarification needed] 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. A review published in 2024 found nearly 1,900 academic articles to have used the term digital native since the mid-2000s, noting how the meaning of the term had evolved to cover everything from businesses and start-ups to new generations of "AI natives".
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Digital native
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. This term was specifically applied to the generation that grew up in the "digital age", predominantly regarding individuals born from 1980 onwards, namely Millennials, Generation Z, and Generation Alpha. It proposes that individuals from these demographic cohorts can quickly and comfortably locate, consume and send digital information through electronic devices and platforms such as computers, mobile phones, and social media.
The ideas underlying the term "digital natives" says that they 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. Supposedly, the digital generation grew up with increased confidence in the technology that they were encircled and in which they were engulfed. Proponents of this term believe that this occurred in part because of their predecessors growing interest in a subject that was previously unknown and that, 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. Prensky concluded that due to the volume of daily interactions with technology, the digital native generation had developed a completely different way of thinking. They further believe that though the brains of these youths may not have changed physically, pathways and thinking patterns had evolved and their brains had changed to be physiologically different than those of the bygone era. Repeated exposure had helped grow and stimulate certain regions of the brain, while other unused parts of the brain were reduced in size.
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. The term digital native is a highly contested concept, being considered by many education researchers as a persistent myth not founded on empirical evidence, and many argue for a more nuanced approach in understanding the relationship between digital media, learning and youth.
Native–immigrant analogy terms, referring to age groups' relationships with and understanding of the Internet, were used as early as 1995 by John Perry Barlow in an interview, and used again in 1996 as part of the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.
The specific terms 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". He also goes on to say that Digital Natives have "spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers and videogames, digital music players, videocams, cell phones and all other toys and tools of the digital age".
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[clarification needed] 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. A review published in 2024 found nearly 1,900 academic articles to have used the term digital native since the mid-2000s, noting how the meaning of the term had evolved to cover everything from businesses and start-ups to new generations of "AI natives".