Digital Native

As digital natives (German: digital natives ) used to describe people who have grown up with digital technology such as computers, the Internet, mobile phones and MP3 players. As Antonym the concept of Digital Immigrant exists (German: digital immigrants " or digital immigrant ) for someone who has come to know these things until adulthood.

Etymology

The first time the term occurs native in the technological context in the published 1996 Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow. In this it is said in one paragraph:

The term digital native was coined by Marc Prensky, a trained educators and managers with activities in the field of e -learning. As origins of the article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants in the magazine On The Horizon in October 2001 and the follow-up article Do They Really Think Differently apply? " [ the ] digital natives " and the like are in December 2001. As transfers of " digital natives " in German " [ the ] Digital Native ", " [ the ] digital natives ", " [ the ] digital natives " are used.

A synonym is the term born digital ( "digital born " ), which was earlier used for media and art, which are purely digital arisen. A label with a different focus is generation Internet. or generation C64. In contrast to the very open in the future called Digital Natives, this term is rather finite and will eventually be replaced by something new, which also applies to the similar generation M [ edia ]. Normally, you can refer to them as Generation Y or Millennials.

Description

Prensky describes with Digital Natives 2001, all students from kindergarten through college. John Palfrey and Urs Gasser pull with 1980 as the oldest year of birth of digital natives in their 2008 book Born Digital an even clearer boundary. It is the first generation that grew up from childhood with the new technologies of the digital age. Computer games, email, the Internet, mobile phones and instant messaging are integral parts of her life, she had early been socialized with them. This ubiquitous features and the massive interaction thus leads to another thought, think differently and to a fundamental difference to process information. Basis is thus that different experiences to different brain structures lead. You are accustomed to receiving information very quickly, they love to work in parallel multitasking. You'll love the direct access to information (as opposed to serial ), pull the front of the text and graphics work best when they are networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent.

Digital Immigrants are not familiar with these techniques from an early age, they adapt their environment to work with. As an indication Prensky offers the following examples: print rather an e -mail or let it be printed by the secretary. They bring more people physically to the office to show them a website, as they will only ship the URL. To revise a text, print it out beforehand. You can not imagine that you can while listening to music or watching television, you can learn because they can not do themselves, because they have not done it in their youth years. Primary are meant before 1970 with the group the birth cohorts.

There is a gap in terms of IT and computer use between these two groups. The students are no longer the same as before. It has thereby adjust according to Prensky, the teaching methods and the content.

After Moshe Rappoport from IBM Research, the young generation is also characterized by risk-taking and quick action, analogous to computer games where you can quickly come up with risk behavior to the target or after a game over just begin again. Galt man. Earlier to have failed if a business idea after two years no longer worked, so it go today more people to test ideas, implement and, where appropriate, to discard them Also, the acceptance of new technologies for introduction into companies play an important role and therefore it will come upon the occurrence of the Digital Natives in the management levels to radically change in company management.

Scientific discourse of the concept

Various studies of public, academic and private institutions for media use behavior of adolescents have dealt with the identification of typical patterns, for example:

• ARD / ZDF long-term study mass media (1964-2005)
• Federal Statistical Office: information and communication technologies in households (2002-2006)
• Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan: Changing Times of American Youth (1981-2003)
• Kaiser Family Foundation: Kids & Media @ the New Millennium ( 1999)

As a result, the definition of terms such as " digital natives " is critical to evaluate how, among other things Rolf Schulmeister has shown. Classification as a " digital native ", " Generation Y ", " Millennial " or the like is therefore rejected by several media experts, because in terms of actual usage behavior ( for which activities ie the media are used ) little difference to previous users are identifiable and has therefore emerged a new generation within the meaning of the term.

Furthermore, a pure classification by age not conform to reality, as not infrequently deal also members of the digital immigrant generation with the new media, as if they had grown up with it. There are also members of the younger generation who prefer more traditional forms of communication and collaboration. Accordingly, the concept of the digital native about the way of dealing with media and technique would be to define and not about age.