A few months ago I was introduced to a
term I had not heard before – ‘digital natives’. It is perhaps because I, along
with everyone else who was born in the 80s or after, am considered to be a
‘digital native’ and therefore would not be self-conscious of the
characteristics that identify me as such.
Those who are digital natives will, by definition, have a better chance of
grasping what this label means. Another way of looking at it is by putting it
in juxtaposition with its opposite, the ‘digital immigrant’. Together they
represent a generational divide in behavioural patterns. A native to digital
mediums is the person in your family who adopts the latest gadgets and their
apps like a duck to water. While the immigrant is someone else who takes a bit
longer to grasp the newest platforms and tools.
Personally I find these terms incredibly
patronising. ‘Digital native’ draws up the image of a mute, pale-faced child
with absolutely no social skills, existing almost entirely through some form of
screen. ‘Digital immigrant’ suggests a wrinkling grandparent, all fingers and
thumbs who can barely work their portable home telephone to say nothing of an
iPad. However, I can see how these labels are useful for designers and producers
thinking about the audience they are trying to reach with their content or
products – the kind of broad audience that encompasses both natives and
immigrants. But lets forget the stereotypes and remember that Steve Jobs was
not born in the 80s and had the capacity to imagine what we would all want in
years to come, and that there are those in their twenties who deliberately
avoid social networking.
Rather than claiming a preference over
one side or the other, I feel both sides have much to learn from the other.
The seeming attachment of natives to
their mobile devices as though they were limbs, is making a digital archive of
the world today the likes of which historians and sociologists could only
fantasise for former periods. By Twitter’s fifth birthday in March this year,
users were sending 140 million tweets a day and the founders had donated its
archive of tweets to the Library of Congress. That’s a huge amount of data
about the values, beliefs, behaviours and issues that are important to us.
The digital footage and records produced
by these natives is also starting to be fully exploited by media producers
looking for the next statement about our worlds today. First there was Kevin
MacDonald’s feature documentary ‘Life in
a Day’ that invited anyone to send in their footage from a day in their
life – 24th July 2010. Directly inspired by MacDonald’s feature the
BBC quickly followed suit with Morgan Matthews’ ‘Britain In A Day’, a film that will bring together life from all
over Britain from the particular day of 12th November 2011. Other TV
projects are in development to use the material that is at their finger tips –
terabytes of the stuff uploaded to countless public forums, its potential for
power and influence not yet realised.
There is of course a risk in the
investment in what the digital natives can bring to a programme. ‘Embarrassing Bodies: Live from the Clinic’
broadcast its first series earlier this year but it was not a good example of the
use of so-called “cutting edge technology”. The use of the well-established
tool, Skype, to provide consultations by doctors within a studio to
contributors in the comfort of their own home via webcam, did not add another
layer to the format but in fact made the show visually static and unenticing.
It was also an unreactive method of addressing the issue of the reluctance of
some to attend their GP due to any embarrassment they might feel – it kept the
patients firmly within their homes.
The new digital environment in which we
work and socialise in can bring us within the reach of more people than ever
before, and yet it also takes us further away from what matters – real human
interaction. In the work place, decisions can be made in a chat over by the
water cooler, relationships built over time through physical presence and
communication. In our personal lives too how often has miscommunication
occurred over the language used in a text or an e-mail? The times are too often
to count and what a revelation it is to discover someone’s true intentions from
their manner and way of being when met in person.
I am someone who will anticipate the
next step in technology and digital trends with great curiosity but I will be
wary of a day when the digital immigrants have left and taken their personal
ways of communication with them.