DIGITAL NATIVES: CHARACTERISTICS AND STUDIES OF MARC PRENSKY - TECHNOLOGY - 2025

The digital natives are all those human beings who have used modern technology at an early age. In other words, the use of technology has been present in their lives since they were children; they have not undergone a process of adaptation to these objects at any time in their adult lives.

This term is used in conjunction with digital immigrants, used to refer to those who had to adapt to technology as adults. Both terms were first coined in 1996, but were popularized in 2001 at the hands of educational consultant Marc Prensky.

characteristics

A single culture

Digital natives were born into a digital culture. At no point in their lives have they had to adapt to a major technological change.

The concept of natives has changed since it became popular in 2001, but it is still used today to differentiate people who grow up in a tech culture from those who don't.

The fact of belonging to a single culture makes it easy for them to adapt to new emerging technologies, with very little familiarization time required.

Covers multiple generations

Digital natives are not members of a specific generation, like baby boomers or millennials. Instead, they are people who in their childhood used technology such as the Internet, computers or mobile devices to communicate with each other.

In turn, this means that people born today are not inherently considered digital natives. If the person grows up in an environment with little technology or has limited access to it, they are not considered a native even if they were born in the 2010s.

Technology as an integral part of their lives

A common characteristic of digital natives is the need to use technology wherever they are. Easy access to information or the simple fact of communicating using mobile technology generate a technological dependency that Prensky himself described as a “singularity”; a process that has no turning back.

Denial of lack of technology

People raised as digital natives are often reluctant to lack technology, especially in an educational setting.

If a teacher uses conventional methods (such as reading straight from a book), a digital native student is likely not performing well in class, or simply not paying attention to the teacher.

Marc Prensky Studies

Prensky's studies revolve around the fundamental modifications that need to be made to the American educational system to adapt to the culture of today's youth. The author argues that understanding that young people are exposed to technology is essential for good educational pedagogy.

Prensky says today's students process information differently than their teachers when they were young. The author's studies state that these differences are often underestimated by educators, and that more attention must be paid to students in order to understand their significance.

Paying attention to student opinion is also an argument Prensky uses to support change in the educational system. The author has given more than 100 conferences in 40 different countries supporting the inclusion of technology in the modern educational environment.

Behavioral changes

The author stated in his 2001 paper that digital natives are highly unlikely to adapt to traditional educational methods. Prenksy says that the way a person is raised affects their thinking, and being exposed to technology may have altered their educational perception.

Furthermore, as indicated by the historical records of mankind, undoing a change to establish a traditional belief is a very difficult task to implement. Digital immigrants must adapt to change and use technology in education, or they may risk losing the interest of their students.

Differences between digital natives and digital immigrants

Technology and communication

The main difference that digital natives have from digital immigrants is that natives were born in the digital age.

Immigrants were born in another era, but technology has inevitably become a part of their lives. This makes natives prefer to communicate through digital devices, while immigrants prefer to do it face to face.

Decisions and thoughts

Another of the main differences of a native is that, unlike the immigrant, the native tends to learn new information intuitively, since he is always exposed to new knowledge on the Internet. On the other hand, immigrants have become accustomed to logical learning, which is a much more traditional approach.

The presence of technology has made digital natives not focus on a specific task, but rather resort to multitasking. The ease of access to tools makes it more difficult for them to concentrate, which generates behavioral changes that affect academic performance if a teacher does not know how to deal with this.

Instead, digital immigrants have become used to concentrating on one task at a time, making them more orderly in practical ways than their native counterparts.

Information and society

Digital natives often obtain information from a number of different media; not only informational websites but also social networks. Although this generates a lack of veracity on some occasions, it also means that they have much less restricted access to information than digital immigrants.

On the other hand, immigrants use traditional information media most of the time, such as television newscasts or newspaper news portals.

Unlike natives, immigrants prefer to interact with few people at a time; natives have become accustomed from a young age to dealing with “groups” of people through access to digital tools for group communication.

References

1. Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants; Marc Prensky, 2001. Taken from marcprensky.com
2. Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants, Jeff DeGraff for The Huffington Post, 2014. Taken from huffingtonpost.com
3. What does it mean to be a digital native? Oliver Joy for CNN, December 8, 2012. Taken from cnn.com
4. Marc Prensky, Wikipedia in English, April 16, 2018. Taken from Wikipedia.org
5. Digital Native, Technopedia, (nd). Taken from technopedia.com
6. Digital Native, Wikipedia in English, March 14, 2018. Taken from Wikipedia.org
7. Digital Immigrants vs Digital Natives: Closing the Gap, Unicheck, (nd). Taken from unicheck.com