Mythmaking Digital Natives and Immigrants – do they really exist?

I recently heard Marc Prensky giving a keynote presentation at Handheld Learning 2007 (HHL 07) (where I also presented – on a much smaller platform . He has an easy manner and gives food for thought. His HHL 07 presentation looked at the themes of ‘Digital Native’ and ‘Digital Immigrant’ with regards to learning and technology, phrases which he is often given credit for coining (http://www.marcprensky.com/blog/archives/000045.html). There are phrases I am very uncomfortable with as increasingly I feel they give an incorrect image of digital usage that relies heavily on stereotypes that just don’t exist! Our interactions with technology reflect so many things: age, culture, requirements etc..

From my understanding a Digital Native grows up with the technology and the Digital Immigrant has to come to it. The Native simply uses because it is an inherent part of their culture and the Immigrant has to adopt it. However, increasingly I find this metaphor unworkable. The concept would work better (for me anyway) if it was considered in terms of adopter and non-adopter and levels of enthusiasm. However (and this is probably important) it doesn’t work as a sound bite then.

At the University I work with various people whose technological (i.e. Digital awareness) ability outshines mine by far and many others as well (and I would generally say that I am very Digitally aware) but they have no interest in mobile technology. Why? It serves them no direct purpose. They do not need it to support their lifestyle (which is commuter based rather than genuinely mobile). At home they own all the means of connectivity e.g. Phone, Broadband, so they do not need the personal access a teenager or lodger might require via a mobile and they use other digital equipment for leisure. Mobile phones are for ringing home or a brief text only. The only small device to be really popular is the Ipod, which is used for company on a long commute or to block out shared office noise.

Yet these people would run rings around most technologically savvy teenagers and children, Prensky’s so labeled Digital Natives.

We all use technology for complex reasons – we need it for work, to communicate, to be entertained etc.. Somewhere in the background complex reasoning is taking place – does the potential benefit outweigh the learning curve?

Most of the technology seemingly used by children and teenagers and leading to the branding of “Digital Native” do one or both two things – they entertain e.g. Ipod, games console or they allow social networking e.g. mobile phone, MySpace. The technology fills a need, younger people (in the West anyway) seem to have more leisure time than adults and these technologies help utilise it.

Alternatively in an adult world we might seek tools which give us more leisure time. So we seek technology that aids that. But here we see digital embracers adopting Internet Supermarket Shopping, online banking, digital television, sophisticated washing machines that allow us to program (what a “Digital Immigrant” from Prensky’s definition – programming by choice??). Sure people find it difficult but so do kids, they don’t all take it to like ducks to water, we are individuals after all (except for me .

Prensky’s terms risk creating an artificial generational barrier that does not have to exist. HHL 07 was picketed by a group of people (calling themselves ‘Voices of Sanity’) who were against the use of wireless technology. I took time to speak with some of them and from the group outside many refused to allow their children to have much contact with any digital technology. Where do those children fit into this model? Where does the ‘silver surfer’ fit in who texts their grandchildren each day and runs their own home network?

We need to step back from the glamour and realise that digital technology is part of lives we love some of it, we hate some of it, we don’t even notice a lot of it. Finally (for now anyway) “natives and immigrants” implies a destination point, a place of permanence. Technology and life isn’t like it it all keeps moving so perhaps all we really have our fellow journeymen and women?