Where the term “digital native” comes to my mind, I associated it with how technology being so advanced today and how that impacting our lives for the young generation who are born in the digital era. In the video, Visitors and Residents introduced how the two hard-edged of people are affected by contemporary digital immersion, where age becomes the criteria to determine if someone has the credential to name after digital natives, the reasons given by David White are aiming at people who are young enough to grow up in the immersion of digital technology, for this type of people that they are currently experiencing the golden learning period in human age, so that digital device won’t be very troubling in their way of thinking. However, for people who are growing up without too much engagement of digital technology, learning how to operate electronics is just like learning a second language.
I doubt what the video put too many components on age to one-vote veto on people growing up with digital technology can be the digital natives. From what I observed from young generation today who age under 18, it is undeniable that they can better understand how to use the latest devices more rapidly than their parents or grandparents, however, what they actually know about digital technology are rather limited, and they can’t reach the inner part of how the technology works. This video is only utilizing the advantage of strong sensitiveness from youngsters to identify how they could learning something so quickly, but he ignored that the ability to learn effectively is what humans born with. If for young people who are growing up in the bucolic environment, there is still no chance for them to accompany with the digital advancement, therefore, age is not the crucial element to determine someone is digital native, but the environment can create a genuine digital native regardless the age limited.
I don’t think of myself as digital natives, because a large part of my growth environment did not contain too many digital elements. The content of Internet knowledge that I learned more began in high school, and the content I learned only involved the most basic digital knowledge. Regarding the term “native”, my perception must be called native only when it reaches a very high level for a certain thing, and this level must be innate.
I found this paragraph very interesting in the Visitor&Resident article, What should we call these “new” students of today? Some refer to them as the N–[for Net]–gen or D–[for digital]–gen. But The most useful designation I have found for them is Digital Natives. Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games, and the Internet. In this passage, the video games and digital language are very accurate, For example, when my father and I were playing a shooting game, he aimed at the enemy and moved significantly slower, because his entire growth environment had not been exposed to digital culture till he was 30 years old, so it exactly verified that we are the native speaker of the digital world.
