Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants: towards a Model of Digital fluency.

Abstract

Recently it has been suggested that 'digital natives', a generation of young people born into the digital age, are inherently technology-savvy. If this suggestion is correct, there could be profound implications for Information Systems research, which traditionally has conducted empirical research on 'digital immigrants'. This paper looks at whether there are significant differences between digital natives and digital immigrants. Our findings suggest that there is a continuum rather than a rigid dichotomy between digital natives and digital immigrants. We propose that 'digital nativity' can perhaps best be conceptualized as 'digital fluency' Digital fluency is the ability to reformulate knowledge and produce information to express oneself creatively and appropriately in a digital environment. We propose a conceptual model that outlines factors that have a direct and indirect impact on digital fluency, namely demographic characteristics, organisational factors, psychological factors, social influence, opportunity, behavioural intention, and actual use of digital technologies.

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