Digital identity has become increasingly prominent in
defining Americans, particularly over the past few decades with the staggering improvements
and modification of technology. The most recognizable worldwide digital companies
have been the creation and development of American innovators, such as Youtube and
Facebook. The article from CNN featuring this issue, raises concerns over the
idea of digital immigrants being 'a relic of the past' and summarizes these two
conflicting terms as the "generational
switchover where people are defined by the technological culture which they're
familiar with."
Prensky, the producer of these terms and this argument
between Native and Immigrant argues that any slowdown in the digital age is a "myth," as innovation
will only press forward "faster... And faster and faster." This is
evident over 10 years after Prensky introduced this issue as can be seen by any
statistics on the subject. The Social Networking Fact Sheet by the Pew Internet
Researchers reveals that as of September 2013, 73% of online adults use social
networking sites. Facebook, as expected appears to come out at the top with 71%
of online adults use this site. Most interestingly is the jump figures such as
these have made in the past decade alone; between
February 2005 and August 2006, the use of social networking sites among young
adult internet users ages 18-29 jumped from 9% to 49%. Also, between the years
2005 and 2013, 90% of 18-29 years old internet users were using social
networking in comparison to 46% 65+ year olds. This continues to reveal that
this is something that has been embraced in particular by young people, hence
the term used to describe them (digital native) and there is clearly a divide
here between this group and the older generation (digital immigrants).
However, there is a group of people
outside America who have not joined the group, not just digital immigrants. That
is those who are poverty stricken, as the CNN article states: "As technology filters into every corner of the globe
and tech cities spring up in some unlikely places from Bangalore to Tel Aviv, a
new gulf is emerging to separate the digitally savvy from the disconnected:
Poverty. According to Shah, Prensky's views were formed from the
"privileged" position of living in the U.S. Shah added:
"[Prensky's] observations may describe a generation gap that the U.S.
faced, but if you transplant the same definition to other parts of the world,
natives are sometimes indistinguishable from immigrants."
Another issue for this
ever-growing digital world is that of digital identity, this is particularly
due to it being mostly based on trust. Significantly, digital identity is
something that can be changes at the click of a button, obviously extremely
different from an individual's real-life identity. Most recently, sites such as Youtube are
attempting to encourage their users to use their real names in order to post a
comment, there is still no way however to verify whether this is their true
identity. Therefore, it is difficult to predict where digital identity will be
in the future or indeed whether the gap between natives and immigrants will
decrease; however as Prensky argued over a decade ago it seems clear that this
is something that most definitely will not be slowing down any time soon.
Sources:
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