Many people in the e-Learning field have read Mark Prensky’s excellent essays Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants – Part 2: Do They Really Think Differently? These essays have become standard reading for educators and employers hoping to understand Millennials (people born between about 1980 and about 2000) as they flow through the school system and into the job market.
The central arguments of Mark’s essays are:
- Millennials have gone through no technology transition – they have always known color TV, PCs, laptops, cell phones, full-action video games, the Internet, and much more.
- Growing up surrounded by these technologies has affected their thinking – they multitask, have a short attention span, need “engaging” learning with lots of visuals, and are addicted to video games.
- Millennials are, therefore, comfortable and skilled with technology. Prensky calls them Digital Natives.
- People born before 1980 did not grow up with technology, therefore they added technological understanding to a technology-free early life.
- People born before 1980 may be very skilled with modern technology, but their thinking will always be pre-Millennial – so they have less ability to multi-task, longer attention spans, and so forth.
- These skilled non-Millennials are digital immigrants.
- Non-Millennials who are not skilled with technology are digital aliens.
Palfrey and Gasser, in their book Born Digital:Understanding the first generation of Digital Natives add to this description the assertion that Millennials are also creative in their use of technology.
Since I first read Mark’s essays, I have championed his ideas at every opportunity. As a self-confessed digital immigrant, they make sense to me. Of course children who grow up with so much technology in their lives think differently. Don’t they?
Not so fast
I’ve worked with cutting edge technology for most of my adult life. I’m addicted to gadgets. I describe myself as an “e-Learning Developer,” and while I’m not a software engineer, I know my way around computer software and hardware rather better than your average 40-something. Frankly, whether or not Mark’s conclusions were accurate, and whether or not they made sense to non-technical people, was of no concern to me until very recently.
On February 6th, 2009, Matthew Nehrling published a blog post entitled “Who are the post-Millennials?” in which he raised the question of how teachers will deal with children born after the mid-1990s. These children are even more soaked in technology than Prensky’s Millennials. He also asked, “How are teachers going to cope with the children of Millennials,” who, by extension, must be even more influenced by technology.
One phrase in that post stood out to me and forced me to rethink my blind devotion to Prensky’s assertions: “As education professionals, we are always behind the curve.”
I realized that Nehrling was right – most educators are not Digital Natives because most of them were born before 1980. They were typically trained by an older generation, one whose learning came from an even older generation, in which everybody learned from book study and classroom lessons. Therefore, the teachers who are teaching today were educated through books and classroom sessions, and they continue to learn and teach that way rather than with digital native methods and thinking.
There are certainly many teachers out there who “get” technology, and who are able to harness it to enhance the learning experience for their students of all ages. However my experience as a mature student and as “technology advisor” to several teachers has been that most teachers, especially those teaching children, have little, if any, grasp of technology. They are not even technologically skilled enough to qualify as digital immigrants.
Even when teachers do have the skills to harness technology, most schools cannot afford to be fully equipped with modern computers and software. This seems particularly true of high schools where most children should get their first opportunity to use the same tools they will use in business.
What defines a digital native?
Christopher Scanlon reports some trends in his article “The natives aren’t quite so restless”:
“In my experience digital natives are the exception rather than the rule.
While most of my students are familiar with e-mail, mobile phones and word processors … only a tiny minority have made a Website or used other high-end design software.
Many are still learning how to construct effective Web searches using Google. They also tend to prefer asking me questions rather than searching for the answers on Google, as reports about digital natives suggest. In fact, from my experience working with students, a fair proportion approach computers tentatively and find them just as frustrating as many older digital immigrants.
As students, they're still in the process of learning how to use technology effectively. That's why they're at university in the first place.”
As University students, we can assume Scanlon’s students are among the brightest Millennials, yet they are not all demonstrating the skills and natural grasp of technology that are defining features of Millennials.
This started me wondering about just who are the real digital natives. I listed what I thought were clear, defining features. My list included items such as:
- tech savvy
- gamer
- shares online – Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, etc.
- skilled with internet searches
- comfortable mixing technologies
- a “natural” with technology
- constantly plugged in to the Net
- motivated to grasp the technologies around them and use these as tools to enhance every aspect of their lives
The list was actually much longer, but as I studied it, I realized that I was actually listing the features that identify what is commonly referred to as a geek. What I also realized was that, even though I agree with the premise of digital natives, I could only see true digital natives as being skilled with the technology that is around them.
Meeting the natives
In February, I was lucky enough to be able to start an Adobe User group in my area. We held our first formal meeting at a local community college early in March, just a few weeks after I first started to reconsider Prensky’s ideas. Ten or eleven students of Web design and technology attended our first meeting. “Geeks,” I thought. This was an opportunity to see real digital natives in the flesh and I was thrilled.
While we were all introducing ourselves and getting to know each other, I asked questions about use of technology. Do you have a smartphone? Most had ordinary devices. Do you use Twitter? Only two or three said Yes. In short, they demonstrated what Scanlon had reported: they were no more comfortable or integrated with the technology around them than people I know from older generations.
So where are the digital natives? And who are they?
Here I’ll step into the realm of speculation, although I’ll try to maintain at least one foot in reality.
True digital natives must have access to the right technology. I’m willing to bet that children of parents who are geeks are more likely to have access to modern technology – the latest computers and gadgets – than the children of non-technophile parents. They will also get more help and advice with the latest Web 2.0 tools and, perhaps most importantly, how to get the best out of Web searches. No true digital native can exist without the critical thinking skill to evaluate Web results, and children of parents who already have that skill are much more likely to be true digital natives.
Children of non-geek parents can have access to the same technology, but they will have to be much more motivated to become expert with it, as their parents will be less willing and able to help them learn complicated technology. Non-geek parents are in the majority at this time. Even though many parents are also Millennials, they are not geeks, so they are not digital natives.
The future
Most people are simply not motivated to become skilled with technology. They are interested in football, or motorcycling, or they want to be doctors, lawyers, firemen, welders, teachers, or mechanics. The urges and background that create a true digital native simply do not come to most people.
Over the next few years, more Millennials will become teachers, but I suggest that most will be non-geeky, computer-shy, computer-illiterate or computer-indifferent, just like their parents and their teachers. Their pupils are as unlikely to be geeks as other generations.
I think it will be another couple of generations before the masses will reach technological ubiquity of the type suggested by Prensky’s Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants essay, by which time the geeks will have moved on to something currently unimagined.
I may be painting a darker and less flattering picture of “the masses” than people might like to see, but the truth is the masses are not and won’t ever be geeks. So they won’t ever be Digital Natives … at least, not while it’s still possible to be an immigrant or an alien.
Digital natives are not Millennials. Prensky’s ideas are too neat, too tidy, and the boundaries between natives, immigrants, and aliens are incorrectly defined.
Digital natives are geeks, and geeks come in all shapes and sizes – and ages. There are plenty of people who are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, or older, who have dealt with technology their whole lives. Just because the video recorder, the game console, and the PC did not arrive until the 80s, we shouldn’t treat that as a marker for the birth of the digital native. True geeks are comfortable with a wide range of technologies, and they are constant learners in order to keep up with changes in technology – and use them. Being a digital native is not about age, but about technological comfort and usage.
Non-geeks who use technology, but are not truly comfortable with it, are the digital immigrants. Again, age is not the measure, it’s knowledge, application, and understanding that defines the immigrant.
Everyone else is a digital alien, regardless of age.
References
Nehrling, Matthew. (February 6, 2009) “Who are the post-Millennials?” http://mlearningworld.blogspot.com/2009/02/who-are-post-millennials.html
Palfrey, John and Gasser, Urs. (2008) Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. New York: Basic Books.
Prensky, Mark. (2001) “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants – Part 1” http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf
Prensky, Mark. (2001) “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants – Part 2: Do They Really Think Differently?” http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part2.pdf
Scanlon, Christopher. (January 21, 2009) “The natives aren’t quite so restless.” http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24939539-25192,00.html
