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Concept
Digital native
Summary
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 specifically applied to the generation that grew up in the "digital age," predominantly regarding individuals born after the year 1980.
Often grouped into Millennials, and Generation Z, these individuals can consume digital information and stimuli quickly and comfortably through electronic devices and platforms such as computers, mobile phones, and social media. The term has given way to "Virtual Natives" coined in a book by Catherine D. Henry and Leslie Shannon (Wiley, 2023), to reflect Generation Alpha, who are growing up in the virtual age, or the era of the 3D web.
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. The digital generation grew up with increased confidence in the technology that they were encircled and engulfed in. 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 engrained, 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. Though the brains may not have changed physically, pathways and thinking patterns had evolved, and brains had changed to be physiologically different that 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.
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