From Digital Natives to Digital Captives: How the Internet Changed Gen Z
New thinking and research from dcdx on the way Gen Z's digital upbringing has affected their lives.
Not too long ago, the internet was a novelty.
Little did we think about what it would do to a generation born alongside it - and even less about what it would mean to grow up with its rapid change.
This is Gen Z — the first generation to be named ‘digital natives,’ a term coined in 2001 to describe the generation of people who grew up in this digital age.
Digital Natives is an incomplete narrative.
Yet the narrative portrayed by ‘digital native’ is not just incomplete - it is misleading. Being more ‘tech savvy’ does not help us understand what it truly meant for a generation to grow up in parallel with these rapid technological changes, with unprecedented access to virtual worlds, overloaded and overstimulated with content.
To paint this picture of what it truly means to be a ‘digital native’, we must look at how Gen Z got here, how they feel about it, and how they are navigating this ‘nativity’ today.