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Does the digital native/immigrant dichotomy work?



    I felt, as I was reading the Prenska article, that my knee-jerk reaction was that I was fortunate to have grown up at the right time (mid-late 2000s), when Web 2.0 features were coming into mainstream culture. I was learning them like everyone else, and I had an advantage. My reaction to the digital immigrants was that these were relatively older users I saw on Facebook, either using ChatGPT for the first time and sharing a tacky image (see Figure 1), or exclusively using their online interactions in my local ‘rants, raves, and reviews’ to initiate arguments. My brain's intuition couldn't have been right. Is there a right way to interact with online communities? That's what constitutes me as a digital native? Are these users who use Facebook and AI in those other ways digital immigrants? Although it's a niche of folks who argue on Facebook, they still use that social media website as it was intended: to connect and interact with others online. So, what is it that makes me feel like they're the immigrants to this digital space?

 



Figure 1. My (truly wonderful) Aunt Robbin is sharing her 1,092nd ChatGPT image on Facebook. This one made it her profile banner.

Sorrentino's article warns of the dangers of Prensky's dichotomy between digital natives and immigrants, noting that it's really not that simple. Same for anything else we try to dichotomize... It's ultimately on a spectrum. Sorrentino says that: "younger generations are not actively and extensively making use of new technologies such as wikis, blogs, and 3D virtual worlds for creating content", and that age is not the only factor that determines a person's digital 'with-it-ness'. I had to reflect on my bias and misconceptions about all digital users.... the online sphere should be a "digital melting pot". Not all young people are creating incredible, innovative online content, and not all older Facebook users are polluting the online sphere with negative content and chilling AI self-portraits. I think this is self-growth.

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