What Is Digital Immigrant? Know The Differences With Digital Natives

Illustration of the digital immigrant generation (StockSnap/Pixabay)

YOGYAKARTA Digital immigrant and digital native are two generations that are often compared. So what are digital immigrant and digital native? The following article will review the two groups. Read on to find out.

According to Investopedia, digital immigrant is a person born before digitalization, quoted by VOI, Wednesday, February 15, 2023.

Meanwhile, according to director Quraish Mathar in the Digital Immigrant Transition to Digital Native, digital immigrant is a generation that has lived since before and during the digital phase.

Groups that fall into this category are people born before the 1980s, or Generation X and baby boomers. This generation must adapt to the technology that has developed very massively in recent years.

For example, if in the past the baby boomers or the X generation used a cell phone model to communicate, today, they were 'forced' to learn to use smartphones. The reason is, old-school cellphones have started to disappear from the market.

Another example is that senior teachers or lecturers who were initially very familiar with 'forced' manual projects must install and synchronize their computers with bluetooth, wifi, and wireless-based programs in order to be connected to 4G of LCD.

From this example, the digital immigrant group takes longer to adapt to technological advances. In this regard, the digital immigrant generation has the following characteristics:

As mentioned above, digital immigrants are inhabited by the baby boomers and generation x. meaning they are elderly parents. This condition causes them to be difficult or reluctant to adapt to modern technology.

With increasing age, their condition and level of understanding will also weaken. This is the reason for them to find it difficult to adapt to modern technology.

Although they tend to be reluctant to use modern technology, the digital migrant group still adapts to technological advances. In fact, they often create online content and share it on social media.

According to Marc Frensky in Digital Native, Digital Immigrant (2001), the term digital native is used to refer to people born in the digital era, or when technology develops such as computers and the internet.

Those who are included in the digital native group are millennials and Generation Z.

Digital native groups are generally familiar with technological developments. They adapt very quickly and feel comfortable using digital tools. In fact, this happened from a young age.

The majority of young children to teenagers are now growing up supported by the sophistication of computer technology, smartphones, and the internet.

Therefore, the digital native group is not reluctant and awkward when it comes to communicating with digital or virtual tools, text certificates, chats, and video calls.

According to Frensky, school students in today's era are natives of the digital world. Meanwhile, the teaching teacher is interested, because they have just gone to the digital world.

That's information about digital immigrant and digital native. Hopefully useful!