The Day the Digital Immigrants Left

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 – 24^th 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 12^th 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.