Evolution of the Digital Native
March 31, 2005 (2 Responses)
So – there I was sitting in a really dull Microsoft presentation about …well about stuff and things (I was bored beyond belief, don’t ask me to remember the topics please!), when suddenly the presenter throws up a slide with crazy statistics and starts talking about the “Digital Native” and how Microsoft (and everyone else for that matter) should be adjusting their strategies and plans to accommodate this new entity for future reference. It wasn’t the title that woke me up, it was the statistics that were on the page and what they suggested as a trend going forward. Beware the Digital Natives, they are coming… 
Let me set the scene. The Microsoft drone (I wonder are they cloned from vats in the same way Borg Drones are? Then of course there is the Microsoft hive mind. Hmm – perhaps a topic for another day… ) anyhoo, the drone was throwing out the usual vole-view of the world when suddenly she drops into this future shock mode, talking about the differences between us (the audience) and our future consumers / clients. The future – it seems – is not too far away, and will be driven by a new breed of people, the digital natives. Before we go any further let me throw some clarifications at you. The term “Digital Native” was penned by Marc Prensky back in 2001 (according to my research anyway) and has been thrown about by everyone in the educational sector ever since. He wrote a paper called Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants concerning how students have changed over the preceeding decades, and how the educational system was falling behind. Prensky uses the following definitions:-
Students who are “Native Speakers” of the digital language of Computers, Video Games and the Internet.
Digital Immigrants:-
Persons not born into the digital world but have adopted many or most aspects of the new technology. However, they retain an “accent”; a foot in the past.
I know the definitions are a bit wanky, but you get the idea. The new breed of Digital Native is a technology savvy animal who craves more information, faster access and wider reach. Just look at some of the statistics gathered about these little buggers below. These stats cover the period from kindergarten to college. The average Digital Native will have spent:
- 10,000 hours playing video games,
- 250,000 hours emailing and instant messaging each other,
- 10,000 hours on a cell phone (although not necessarily talking – it could be texting),
- 20,000 hours watching TV,
- Will have been exposed to approximately 500,000 commercials (TV, Print, Radio, Internet etc.);
- and spent less than 5000 hours reading books
The characteristics of a digital native are even more interesting. This new breed:-
- Are used to receiving information really fast; the faster the better,
- Usually parallel process and multitask; it’s their preferred way to operate,
- Prefer graphics over text,
- Function best when they are networked,
- Thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards;
- Prefer “games” to any kind of “serious work”.
Another really stupid item brought up by Microsoft involved the notion that kids of tomorrow would evolve differently from those of today, in the physical sense. They quoted (and I’m serious here, in an actual meeting with business partners they came out with this stuff!) the example of a person ringing a doorbell. You or I would walk up to the doorbell and push the button – but we would more than likely use our index finger to push the bell. A Digital Native on the other hand would more than likely use their thumb – because with all the thousands of hours of texting on mobile phones and playing nintendo they’ve been doing it’s logical to assume (according to Microsoft) that over time these kids will evolve larger and more flexible thumbs.
When I’d stopped gagging at the insanity of hearing such crap in a business meeting and managed to get control of myself again I started conjuring up the future, and the next evolutionary step for these Digital Natives as they take over the world. Let’s be honest -it gave me something to occupy my mind while I waited for the Microsoft drone to finish her presentation. Over the coming decades and possibly even centuries of evolution we will see the Digital Native grow to epedimic proportions, and take over the world. But all is not lost, for I give you now the key characteristics of future Digital Natives, so that you can tell them apart from us Digital Immigrants…
- In a wonderful return to mother nature, the Digital Native will have developed oversized opposable thumbs, so big in fact that they will have to drag them along the ground like big hairy knuckles!
- Decades of texting will lead to bastardisation of the English (and other) languages, until short-speak is developed. This will be a combination of TLAs (Three letter abbreviations), text messaging and keywords, resulting in a very efficient, global single shorthand for communication among themselves. They won’t be able to handle standard languages anymore!
- The craving for more and more information will lead to an enlarged brain. Rather than accommodating the extra usage within the current cranium, their skull structure will grow to still only use 10%, but now it’s 10% of a larger brain. This will present most Digital Natives with a bit of a tilted head as their spine struggles to handle the extra weight! I Predict they will tilt to the left
- The will all suffer from AAD (Attention Deficit Disorder) leading to very small windows of opportunity to actually communicate between bouts of anxiety, depression and online virtual reality gaming.
It’s not a pretty future is it? Still – we can all rest assured that Microsoft have thought long and hard about this and are taking these trends into consideration when compiling their own latest set of strategies and plans to take over the world.
Anyone measured the size of Bill Gates thumbs recently? 
excellent. my piece was a good companion, and while poking in this direction, do not be suprised to see things evolving that way. my goodness you busted your ass on this.
Thanks Rev… that post is over a year old and I’d quite forgotten about it until I read your piece earlier today. I never really know where this site is heading…so sometimes the content is humourous, other times its political and then again it’s usually weird, but in this case I really was sitting in a boring meeting with Vole central while they droned on about the usual rubbish and the only thing that got my attention was the term ‘digital native’.. after that I just did a little research (where would we be without search engines?!?) and hey presto – a crazy post was born.