Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, and Why Generation Gaps Do and Don't Exist

The gap between those who are growing up immersed in digital technology and those who are gradually adapting to it is a significant one, widening sometimes already-wide generation gaps. Coined in 2001 by education writer and game designer Marc Prensky, the term digital natives refers to that first group. Prensky wrote in 2001 that digital natives, a generation that extends upward to include people now in their midtwenties, "have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age." As a result, argued Prensky, these young people "think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors," with profound implications for schools, libraries, employers, and beyond.

As Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, wrote in 2006, natives are multitaskers who not only offer their opinions through reviews and ratings online, but are also more likely than digital immigrants to create their own content online. "More than half of American teenagers have created a blog, posted an artistic or written creation online, helped build a website, created an online profile, or uploaded photos and videos to a website," said Rainie in a 2006 presentation. "They think of the internet as a place where they can express their passions, play out their identities, and gather up the raw material they use for their creations."

Like any neat categorization, however, the digital native, digital immigrant nomenclature obscures gray areas—like the fact that the current generation of thirty- and fortysomethings are somewhere between native and immigrants—and leaves unanswered the question of how the natives' behavior may change and modify over time.

Similarly, the native/immigrant divide can give a false impression that older people cannot be technologically savvy. Immigrants, however, often gain citizenship in this new online landscape, and the religious sphere is no exception. In the 2004 study "Faith Online" from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, for example, nearly half of those who participate in religion in some form online are between thirty and forty-nine.

While some form of generation-based technology divide exists, the most significant differences may be between those who live online and those who go online. Frank Santoni, of the Catholic Campus Ministry at Southern Methodist University, pointed out that for those who live online, including young people, the distinction between online and offline life doesn't hold a lot of water, because those two blend together so completely. "The Internet is simply a tool, a means of communication. If you talk to someone on the telephone, is that 'telephone life' or real life? Obviously, we've come to see the telephone is simply an instrument of communication. That's how young people see the Internet."