Digital Native and Millennial

Those of us who are already an age have had to assume and adapt to the emergence of a series of technologies that, those who have been born after certain years, have always seen their scope. The latter, the youngest, are the so-called “digital natives”.

A digital native is defined as a person born between 1980 and today, who has already grown up surrounded by information and communication technologies.

Who coined the term was the American writer Marc Prensky, specialized in education, who in 2001 spoke of this term for the first time in his article On the horizon, after establishing cognitive and learning between younger children and their parents.

These differences focus on how the youngest children more quickly assume the functioning of a new technology than those that must adapt to it.

This term is mixed and confused with that of millennial, since the latter is the one born from 1979, although some authors differ in this conception.

We can consider that the term

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digital native It is, in general, framed within what a millennial is, that is, that most of the millennials are also digital natives, although not necessarily the other way around.

The opposite of digital natives would be digital “immigrants”, born before 1980 and who have had to adapt to the emergence of these technologies (computers, cell phones, Internet) from a certain age, from a point in his life.

It is not an arbitrary separation; It is well known that the ability to adapt to new knowledge, habits and ways of working is when one is young, that is, as a child. What is more arbitrary are the dates, since some authors advance the beginning of the this generation, and others delay the switch to the next generation, the Z, who are also "native digital ”.

Mastery of a computer It will not be, therefore, the same, of a person who, from the age of 50, has had to learncomputing, than that of a child who since childhood has used the Internet at home and on the school through computers and cell phones, be it those of the parents, the school, and later their own.

A digital native is denoted by an intuitive knowledge of technology, quickly grasping the ways of using different or new devices and interfaces without requiring training or training previous.

This is so because they have become familiar with metaphors such as the desktop, icons, applications, or connecting to the Internet to solve their problems.

Being a digital native also carries certain dangers, such as not considering certain potentially pernicious aspects of security with electronic tools.

Although various authors point out that digital natives care about their privacy, many others also point out that excessive confidence In their mastery of new technologies it leads them to make mistakes such as visiting websites of dubious origin, providing personal data excessively to social networks and websites in which they register, or to use cell phones to send very personal content or sensitive.

The latter can end up seeing the public light on the Internet through another person or by hacking companies that store them. We all have in mind the case of the personal photos of celebrities leaked to the Internet after a massive hack of their iCloud accounts.

Photos: Fotolia - faithie / mclemay