Recently, my 18 year-old son asked me, "Are you the oldest woman in social media?" While most 53-year-old women do not relish being the "oldest woman" anywhere, I found the question to be more of a compliment than a criticism. My son was half-joking with his question but it stirred me to think about how he is a "digital native" while I am a "digital immigrant."
One obvious example of inherent generational differences between a digital native and digital immigrant lies in the way that I conducted my initial research on this topic. I went to Google and then Wikipedia as my "sources." Next, I went to the Urban Dictionary. Back when I was in high school, my tools and techniques for doing research were completely different. I went to the library, used the Encyclopedia Britannica, went to the card file system and used the Dewey Decimal system to locate print books on my topic. If the print books weren't available, you might have found me using microfiche.
Wikipedia defines the "digital native" as a person who was born during or after the general introduction of digital technologies and, due to interacting with them from an early age, has a greater understanding of digital media concepts. Conversely, a digital immigrant is an individual who was born before the existence of digital technology and adopted it later in life.
Yet, when I compare my digital comfort level and expertise to that of many of my similarly aged peers, these designations don't really hold up. Instead of the binary categories of digital native and digital immigrant, can there be a "mash-up" of an individual who gravitates to and understands the application of digital technology but is housed in a middle-aged body? Yes, that's me and many others like me; we can remember our first Compaq portable computers in the 1980s but that doesn't mean we are less savvy with Twitter or Facebook than younger generations.
I used Twitter before my kids, we probably began on Facebook together, and I've also migrated them to LinkedIn. Part instinct and part affinity, I firmly have established myself as a hybrid in this rapidly changing world. I know that social/digital media platforms are cool and useful and that Apple has created some truly innovative hardware, but I also know that these are just fads like the Wang Word Processor, IBM Selectric, and IBM PC. It's not hard for me to foresee i-Everything one day outdated by the next new technology.