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Digital Delights
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This year marks ten years from the first introduction to the term “Digital Natives,” coined originally by Marc Prensky in two seminal articles that established the traits of the digital native (2001a, 2001b). Prensky is by no means the first person to try and identity a new, distinct, generation of humans, and digital natives isn’t the only term proposed to describe them. Other common terms come from Oblinger & Oblinger (2005) and Tapscott (1997) who use the term net-generation, and Strauss & Howe (2000) use the term Millennials to describe this same generation of students. The dates do vary from author to author, but not by much; and the characteristics attributed to this new generation blend easily from author to author because a lot of the characteristics are predicated on access and utilization of technology and the Internet. This naming fetish didn’t stop at these three terms, and these terms are used interchangeably in every day discussions, but for the purposes of this article, this article will use the term “digital native.”
The emergence of the classification of this new generation lead to many articles, blog posts, columns, books and videos on educating this generation and taping into these learners’ new learning styles (Dede, 2005). Popular viral videos were produced showing statistics of new technology usage (Socialnomics, 2009) and emotional pleas from self-professed young digital natives that would like to see change in the institutions that educate them and cater to their unique digital needs and learning styles (VALATV, 2010; Nesbitt, 2007) What’s amazing about this term, and all that it implies, is the amazing speed with which it took hold in circles broader than the educational circle, and how it became part of our “common sense” without having been tested much in every day practice. The digital native became a rallying cry for change in education, (expensive) technological infusion at all levels of education, and broad-changes in institutions that are providing learning opportunities and environments to these digital natives. This article aims to critically examine the underlying digital native theory, review recent studies inquiring about the existence of digital natives, and to examine the effects that this “movement” has had on the learning professions.