The term digital native describes a person who has grown up in the information age. The term "digital native" was coined by Marc Prensky , an American writer, speaker and technologist who wrote several articles referencing this subject. Individuals from these demographic cohorts can quickly and comfortably locate, consume and send digital information through electronic devices and platforms such as computers , mobile phones , and social media.
Digital natives are distinguished from digital immigrants, people who grew up in a world dominated by print and television, because they were born before the advent of the Internet. Due to their upbringing, this digital generation of youth became fixated on their technologies as it became an ingrained, integral and essential way of life.
Native—immigrant analogy terms, referring to age groups' relationships with and understanding of the Internet, were used as early as by John Perry Barlow in an interview, [ 8 ] and used again in as part of the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. The specific terms digital native and digital immigrant were popularized by education consultant Marc Prensky in his article entitled Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants , in which he relates the contemporary decline in American education to educators' failure to understand the needs of modern students.
In other words, children raised in a digital, media-saturated world, require a media-rich learning environment to hold their attention, and Prensky dubbed these children "digital natives". He also goes on to say that Digital Natives have "spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers and videogames, digital music players, videocams, cell phones and all other toys and tools of the digital age".
Globally, 30 percent of the population born between and had used the Internet for over five years as of Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Marc Prensky defines the term "digital native" and applies it to a new group of students enrolling in educational establishments referring to the young generation as "native speakers" of the digital language of computers, videos, video games, social media and other sites on the internet. Contextually, his ideas were introduced after a decade of worry over increased diagnosis of children with ADD and ADHD, [ 12 ] which itself [ clarification needed ] turned out to be largely overblown.
