digital nation - life on the virtual frontier

Digital Native Map Changing with technology

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89 percent of 18- to 24-year-old Americans are online

Digital Natives aged 12 to 24 spend 4.5 hours a day viewing screen media (TV, Internet, Internet video, mobile video), excluding games [PDF]

82 percent of seventh- to twelfth-graders "media multitask" while doing homework, e.g. IM, TV, Web surfing, etc.

A Generation on Fast Forward

Meet Wen-Jay, 24, and her dog, Wuji. They live in Brooklyn, New York and are part of a generation called Digital Natives, or NetGeners. They've grown up immersed in digital technologies and there's evidence they're being affected in ways unheard of before computers and the Web. And their parents -- sometimes called Digital Immigrants -- are still getting accustomed to their hyperconnected world.

But we all feel digital media's impact on how we think, work, learn and interact with one another. Will these changes have a positive or negative effect on us? Will Digital Natives have a different kind of brain than Digital Immigrants? How does the emphasis on the visual, and on visual interaction, affect our relationships and our sense of self? Should we worry about these things at all?

Learn more -- click on different parts of Wen-Jay.

posted February 2, 2010

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