In the early 2000s, author Marc Prensky defined the entirety of technology users as either “Digital Natives” or “Digital Immigrants”. Each term referred to the technology user’s age, the young users being natives as they grew up with technology, and users who are on the older side being immigrants to technology as they were not able to grow up with it. While this definition could apply to some users, its broad generalization failed to address every aspect of technology. This failure became problematic as it went unnoticed by the public and Prensky’s article was initially greeted with nearly completely positive reception, however, as time passed, people began to realize that technology is far too broad of a term to be defined so generally.
To elaborate on the issue with this generalization, we can look at author Gustavo S. Mesch as he explains in her article “The Internet and Youth Culture” that youth have inadequacy’s when interacting with the technology despite falling into the conceptual “digital native” category. Mesch’s article opened a new perspective for me: technology is purely a digital form of the real world. With this in mind, the term digital native becomes obsolete to me, as feeling comfortable working a mouse and a keyboard does not equate to being a digital expert. Children and teens may be able to type fast and use a mouse well, but those skills do not mean they are able to know the importance of information privacy or other issues that one could face when navigating the web.
After applying Prensky’s outdated terms to Mesch’s context of the internet, I understood the reason for needing a better understanding of defining technology use, so I was really able to enjoy David S. White and Alison Le Cornu’s article “Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement.” In their article, the authors are able to extensively define different functions of the web on a much broader scale using a multi-axis spectrum rather than a simple two-category system. For example, the X-axis represents a “visitor” on one side and a “resident” on the other. An action performed falling on the visitor side would be simply googling information, finding it on a website, and then departing from that website without leaving a trace of your identity. On the other side of the spectrum, an interaction in the form of a resident would be logging on to Twitter or any site where you create a profile and produce and interact with content repeatedly throughout your lifetime. I really valued this article, specifically the typology I learned, as it really helps me understand technology with more detail and better definition.
