TOPIC 1: “Digital Residents” and “Digital Immigrants”
As social media is becoming more and more prevalent, the previous “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” distinction suggested by Prensky (2001) is needed to be reconsider since the use of Internet has changed. In the past, Internet was primarily used for information gathering or finding information, but now, social-networking also came into place. Digital “natives” and “immigrants” are distinguished by age and generation. Prensky suggested that “natives” are born into the digital world while “immigrants” are those who have access to the web at some later point in their lives.
Although these two terms have been widely used by popular press, they might be inappropriate to use. Due to additional purposes in the use of internet, some young people who are meant to be “digital natives” may perform brilliantly on social-networking platform, but do not have a clear understanding of how to use digital technologies to support and enhance their learning effectively. Therefore, simply focusing on ones age to determine whether they are experts of the digital world is not effective since some can do better than others. Also, there are individual differences among generation and therefore, we cannot generalize people at the same age-stage.
Rather than focusing on ones age-stage, their life-stage and roles might be more accurate and useful to be focused on. People at different life-stage (eg. role as a students, employees, retired people) have different motivations to use digital technologies. With different purposes, diverse values are placed on the usage of web. Therefore, instead of using digital native and immigrates, digital “visitor” and “resident” are more appropriate terms to use to distinguish individuals.
“Digital visitors”, according to White & Cornu (2011), refers to people who use web as a tool, to achieve specific goals and tasks. They are unlikely to have any form of online profile that projects their identity and are unlikely to express their personal opinions online. These can be due to several reasons, including the worries of identity theft and problems of privacy.
“Digital residents”, on the other hand, see web as a place. They live a proportion of their life online. The web supports their projection of their own personal identity and they will maintain this persona regularly. They are likely to share information about themselves, express their own opinions online and use web in many aspects of their live (eg. for study, for work, for practical services such as online banking, shopping etc.).
One thing to bear in mind is that individuals can place themselves at any point between “visitors” and “residents”, not just categorizing as one or the other. There can be multiple life roles for one and different roles lead to variations in motivation and purpose when using web, this will then leads to the use of different approaches across different context.
I see myself taking an approach towards the resident end on the spectrum in my private life as I share my personal opinions via social networking media such as Facebook, interact with practical services such online banking system and online shopping, and communicate and maintain my relationships with my friends and family online because they are not in the same country as me. However, I do take an approach towards the visitor end when doing my university work since I use the web as a tool to attain my goal, for example, to find specific journals and to access to online learning resources. Once I have achieved my goals or completed my tasks, I will then log off.
In conclusion, instead of using the term digital “natives” and “immigrants”, digital “resident” and “visitors” are more appropriate terms to use in the modern society since it is not an age based or skill based distinction, it categories people by focusing on their motivation, purposes and the way they value web.
Reference:
Prensky, M. (2001). “Digital natives, digital immigrants,” On the Horizon, volume 9, number 5, [Online] Available at: http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf, [Accessed: 5 February 2015]
White, D. S., & Cornu, A. L. (2011). Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 16(9). [Accessed: 6 February 2015]
White, D. (2008). Not Natives’ & ‘Immigrants’ but ‘Visitors’ & ‘Residents’, TALL blog, University of Oxford, [Online] Available at: http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/index.php/2008/07/23/not-natives-immigrants-but-visitors-residents/ [Accessed: 6 February 2015]
