Subject areaProcess and organisation
Digital immigrants are people who grew up before the spread of the internet and personal devices, and learned digital technologies as adults.
The expression comes from Marc Prensky, who in 2001 set it against digital natives: those who learn digital late speak it like a second language, even fluently, but keep an accent, that is the habits of the earlier era.
In a company the distinction helps design training and change management. A digital immigrant often brings experience and judgement that younger colleagues lack, and adopts a tool once they see its link to their own work. So age matters less than exposure: later research showed that digital skill depends on use and context more than on year of birth.
Source: Marc Prensky, «Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants», On the Horizon, 2001.
An example
The case below is constructed, because the term does not yet appear in the articles. In a manufacturing company the sales director, who learned the trade with the phone and trade fairs, still prints CRM reports to read them with a pen. The training that works for this director starts from the decisions he makes every week and shows how the tool makes them faster, instead of starting from the software menus.
broader entriesthis entry and narrowertwo levels down← up · → down
Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com
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