Being a Digital Native
As a person that considers herself a digital native (given I cannot recall my life without computers) I am always intrigued by the way we are perceived. In all honesty, I believe that one never fits in entirely into any category, but I found a post I thought was pretty good at describing how I would describe myself and my peers. I found it via Twitter, via @Marcus_Andrews, via HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog.
In this post titled Do you have digital natives at your organization?, Brian Whalley call companies to hire digital natives and gives four reasons why they should.
1) Natives are More Interested in the Information than the Machine
2) Puzzles, Problems and Games
3) Digital Natives Love Constant Communication, But Hate Phones
4) Digital Natives Tell It Like It Is
I like this post because I agree with most things it has to say about the rather enigmatic digital natives.
I believe claims 1, 3, and 4 perfectly apply to myself and my peers.
It is true, I love the fact that I have easy access to an enormous amount of information to satisfy my ever growing curiosity for random facts and high need for cognition, and the machines that facilitates this process is negligible.
It is true, I hate being on the phone, because it is intrusive, requires too much attention, and it’s generally uncomfortable when it’s too close to your face. Hence, I am often accused of being rude/cold/inattentive/you name it, whenever I talk on the phone with my mother.
It is also true, that I am also fond of being honest and telling people what I think (how long it can take me to work up courage to say what I think, and whether or not I say it at opportune moment, is certainly a subject of debate).
But…
I am not entirely sure about claim 2.
I believe I fall under the category of “digital native”, and I do like games, problem solving and puzzles to certain extent. But to me liking these things does not make me prone to not liking asking for help.
I may not ask a person for help, especially one I am not fond of or don’t trust. But I will go strait to google, and google does have answers. And when I don’t know something, I have to ask someone. It is humanly impossible to know everything or be able to solve any problem entirely on one’s own. Besides, isn’t asking for help half the work involved in problem solving? And aren’t there lots of forums that help you figure out games? And a thousand other ways you can ask for help without having to actually talk to someone else in you office?
Maybe it’s just me misinterpreting the post or refusing to admit I don’t like asking for help… or… maybe I’m right.Regardless I thin Mr. Whalley was right on with his other 3 claims about the digital native generation.
