Age and the Internet
According to Marc Prensky in 2001, there were two groups of internet users: digital “Natives” and digital “Immigrants” (White & Le Cornu). This breakdown arose from the idea that there was now a generation of people who had grown up with that technology and could thus speak the language of digital technology fluently. This generation of digital natives is the one I grew up in, supposedly effortlessly using technology. This is not how I remember my childhood and it certainly doesn’t reflect my experiences today. My parents were very hesitant when it came to letting my younger sister and I use things like the internet and social media. We were banned from ever using our real names and birthdays on any website and the websites we were allowed to go on were limited. I remember having to beg my parents to let me get an email when I was close to starting middle school so I could talk to my friends after school. I didn’t get a cell phone until I started high school.
And I do feel behind some of my peers when it comes to the digital language so I can understand why Prensky would have theorized the native/immigrant categories. However, I find that there issues with making the assumption that all people of a certain age have an innate sense of how new technology works. If people had assumed I knew how something like social media worked while I was still in middle school, I wouldn’t have because I didn’t have any experience with any social media until my sophomore year of high school. If anything, I was more creative before getting online. My sister and I used to record little radio shows on cassette tapes when we were kids and I’ve never done something like that on my phone. I think there are also skills that need to taught to even people have a really good sense of new tech. Even the people most fluent with using social media need to be taught how to identify misinformation and whether something is a good source of information. If we assume a generation of people know everything there is to know about the internet, they might miss learning these valuable skills or not be able to apply them to the online environment.
There seem to me to be things you can pick up if you’re a more frequent user of digital tech. However, given my personal experience, I agree more with White’s & Le Cornu’s idea that this divide should not be based on age. The visitor/resident continuum that they proposed strikes me as being the better metaphor for my online experience, especially the fact that it is a continuum. I currently do not use any form of social media, putting me closer to the visitor side of the continuum. However, I do feel like I spend a great deal of time on the internet, especially right now. I do leave a trace when I’m online, just not one that is quite as obvious, such as the work I do for my online classes. This distinction is why I especially like the part of the White & Le Cornu theory that adds a second continuum: institutional vs. personal. I found this additional element to be very clarifying for me and really made me appreciate this way of looking at tech usage. I feel like I am definitely a person that is a digital resident when it comes to my institutional, or educational, life and a visitor in my personal life. It was actually this part of the metaphor that got me the most on board with thinking that this is a good way to define tech users.
I also really appreciate the note in Mesch’s article about going beyond tech determinism and social construction of technology (55). One thing that comes up over and over again in sociological theories is whether the theory is about the individual or about society and what the role of agency is in the theory. I think these are important ideas to think about when it comes to any sort of conception of the way people interact with the broader world. I was happy to see Mesch bring up parts of this concept and use it to illustrate the fact that technology can influence us and we can influence technology.
