A digital Pocahontas...

Increasingly these days I hear stories from people about young children being able to use Iphones, IPads, computers and all manner of gizmos without ever been shown how to use them. I know a 3year old who can flick through a Ipod touch to find his favourite songs (He can't even read) and then when he's bored doing that goes over to YouTube and starts watching videos. I was even told of a 5 year old who can recite the first 13 digits of Pi, whatever happened to action man??...
Surely this is all nonsense you say... Nope, it's not. In an ever expanding digital community everyone can be placed into one of two groups;

'Digital native'(Post 1985) or 'Digital immigrant' (Pre 1985)

Born post 1985? Then you are part of the digital native group. Natives have a naturally adaptive attitude to technology, allowing them to easily operate new technology and interfaces based on past experiences with previous technologies. Digital immigrants on the other hand have difficulty at first grasping the concepts of new technology but do adapt, just not as fast as a native would. I find that anyone born as far back as the 50's or 60's generally either have no interest in trying to adapt or have greatest difficulty adapting.
I myself experience these two cultural differences all the time, I can easily learn how to work just about any kind of technology quickly and often find myself solving problems for people on a device I've never used before.

In the last couple of years there as been a massive amount of people immersing themselves in social media (Facebook,Twitter etc.) and spending more time in the matrix (Internet) than they do in real life. It's becoming ridiculous where people feel that the whole world needs to see the entire life by photographing every drunken escapade and writing bullshit status updates. Did I also mention that people have forgotten how to speak English online? Fantastic grammar such as 'sumone' (Someone), 'reakon' (reckon), 'lyk' (Like), the list could go on for awhile...

Roping the blog back on track here's some interesting statistics about our ever-growing group of digital natives;

• There are 3 times more smartphones activated every minute than there is babies (Ever see a baby being activated? ...Me neither.)
• 30% of USA teens send 100 texts a day (Today I've sent 200... To one person)
• In 2010, 700 billion YouTube videos were viewed, that's a massive 1.9 million per day!
• 72% of under 25's comment on TV programmes via social networks
• 79% of students subjected to a media blackout reported adverse reactions ranging from distress, confusion & isolation

The last point in particular I can fully relate to, at any time of the day I can connect to the internet via my phone, tablet, laptop or computer. I never realised how attached I was to the internet until the power went of at home and I literally had no idea what to do with myself, until I got a smartphone with mobile internet... Problem = Solved. You cannot deny that the internet is easily the best thing since sliced bread but on the other hand the scale at which things are moving I fear that the line between reality and virtual will become so blurred that you'll not know if your a level 36 Warlord or not.... but on a serious note, we should be mindful of how the internet is inevitability going to starting affecting a social skills. We should try doing this ancient thing called talking face-to-face with real people (Deep breaths now) and experience social interaction in a real environment from time-to-time.