Digital Denizens

http://www.stockton.edu/~intech/spotlight-digital-denizens.htm

I never realized until reading this article that technology users were categorized. Not only are there 7 different categories but users can consider themselves a digital refugee, digital immigrant, digital native, etc. After reading the information about the digital denizens I feel like I am considered a digital native slowly progressing towards a digital addict. I grew up having a computer and being surrounded by technology. The first computer I remember having was an Apple and the only thing we could do on it was play games. When my family informed me that we were getting a new desktop computer my brother and I were ecstatic. This is also when I was introduced to the internet (dial-up of course), and being able to chat with friends and print anything I saw online. The information I read also considers a person in this category someone who uses technology to execute a wide variety of tasks, which I was becoming real familiar with. Not only was I chatting with friends but I could build my own webpage, play games with my friends, edit and post pictures I had taken, and many other things.

Because I was introduced to technology at a young age I feel as if sooner or later I will be considered a digital addict. Especially because so much of what we do is either on our laptops or our smart phones I feel as if many, many people heavily rely on technology. We’ve all experienced the one day we left our phones at home, or our laptops couldn’t access the internet, and what do we do? We freak out! I’ll admit that almost everything I do daily has some sort of relation to at least one piece of technology. Because technology has improved at rapid speeds I’m excited to see what’s in our future. Consequently, if we freak out now about losing our phones who knows what’s going to happen with this situation in 20 years.