DIGITAL NATIVES, IDENTITIES, AND ME

Digital Natives are those who were born after 1980 and were raised with a wide range of technology and the skills needed to use them.

Digital Settlers are older people who have helped to shape the digital environment to be what it is today.

Digital Immigrants are those who’ve learned how to use email and social networks late in life

Digital Natives live much of their lives online, without distinguishing between the online and the offline.

A 16 year old girl can create a new identity and go into an online environment where people do not know who she is, at least for a while.

She might create a profile of herself in a new social network. She could present herself in a way that is strikingly different from the way she presents herself in real space.

In this sense, our Digital Native could reinvent herself many times over without leaving her bedroom, much less her village. And she need not explore these identities successively over time; instead, she can create them all in one day and explore them simultaneously.

Some sociological theories suggest that young people have multiple selves; others argue that these multiple forms of representation come together into a more or less unitary self-construct.

much representation

very wow

so many

wow

In focus groups and interviews, most Digital Natives revealed that they had multiple self-representations. Where they disagreed was on what these multiple self-representations meant for identity.

Some saw themselves as having one or more “identities” in the converged online and offline worlds, whereas others perceived themselves as having only one identity that was expressed in both contexts.

Sometimes a Digital Native adjusts a dominant part of his or her digital identity by creating a new profile or gaming character, or switching platforms when one social network or virtual world goes from hot to passé.

When they makes a switch to a new platform, their former identities don’t really die, but remain as part of their complex sense of self—at least as perceived from the outside.

Identity in a digital age gives rise to two paradoxes; the first is that a 16 year old girl living in the digital age can adjust her social identity with ease, but has far less ability to control how her identity is perceived by others than she would have had in previous eras.

The second is that, though a 16 year old girl can create multiple identities online with ease, she is more bound to a single identity than ever before. The conventional understanding of identity holds that, over time, one can create multiple versions of oneself. Each of these can be tailored to specific audiences.

A young person may have a single identity online that is different from his or her every day, real-space identity. Or he or she may have a range of different online identities: one in MySpace, another in Facebook, one or more in World of Warcraft. Sometimes, these multiple identities are sustained as separate and kept distinct from one another.

Before this class, I didn’t think too much about my technological background or my status as a ‘Digital Native’, but now I’ve come to some very important conclusions. I was born into an interesting time and obtained my tech privilege in an interesting manner, but it’s given me what I needed to get where I am today.

The ability to create identities gives me a creative freedom that I never imagined I could have. I can step inside an alternate world where I’m useful and cared about. I use my identities (my characters) to make teeny, tiny families and connections with other people who want the same things I do. It’s what makes us a family.

Let me introduce you to my girls. (Except Jen, because she’s a canon character, she’s also dead, so there’s that…)

On Being A Digital Native

Megara Nicole Owens

Megara is the first one I created for Chaos Rising, so despite her age, she’s the ‘first born’. She’s probably the one who resembles me the most, but she’s also the one I’d like to be.

Meg is an incredibly bright and talented young woman; her passions lie in music and gymnastics, but she’s also pretty crafty. Megara’s dad was a mechanic and he taught her most of what he knew before he died (Thanks, Jen). She’s also built my dream tree house.

Like me, she has bipolar disorder and anxiety and she’s a massive nerd, but unlike me, she had a functional family and a dad that loved her.

Shayna Marie Lynch

Shayna was my second one. She’s an alpha werelion and the sole survivor of her pack. Fun fact: she’s deaf as a result of the explosion that killed them.

Shay is a gentle young woman, but fiercely protective of the people she cares about; we have that in common. She is on a personal quest to find her place in life. Shayna does her best to see the best in people, but there is a small part of her that will remain ready to bolt at the first sight of trouble.

Shayna represents the part of me that is insecure and scared of what people think. I have trouble communicating verbally with people and so does she.

Delaney Moira Smythe

Delaney. Oh, Laney. I was feeling incredibly feisty when I created her. She is probably the least like me.

Laney was raised to be a prim and proper young lady – and she can be, but only when she feels like it. She’s a headstrong, spoiled brat with a dominating personality. The girl likes to pick fights because she knows she can win and it gives her a rush. A loose cannon who trusts her gut instinct, she can only be corralled by three people: her brother, her alpha, and Derek.

There are only two things that make us similar; the way we call people out on their shit and the way we Hulk out when provoked, but I’m a verbal fighter.

Elsa Sarabeth Hale

Making Elsa was interesting. In essence, she is who I hope to become someday.

Elsa is the eldest of her siblings and as such, she’s a responsible woman with a keen sense of right and wrong. She can be stern, but she’s never cruel; Elsa is trustworthy and secretive. Her strengths lie in her belief in herself; if Elsa believes that she can do something, she’s very seldom wrong. A loving mother and a empathetic therapist, she lives to help people work through their past traumas so they can move on to bright futures.

She’s the hardest one to step into because I’m not quite there yet, but I like to think I’m on my way.

Vanessa Rose Irving

Vanessa is the youngest of my girls and the one that you’ve read about the most.

Vanessa is my chance to explore a part of me that I’m slowly discovering: the lost one. As you read in her map, Vanessa recently lost a family member to something (SPOILER: Werewolf, duh) and she’s tracking it. Currently, she’s living out of her car and out of her savings account, which isn’t particularly large.

This is the situation I’m finding myself in. Come mid-June, I will have no house in which to live, I will have minimal – if any – money in my account, and I’ll be looking for a way out. Maybe Nessa can shine some light on my situation

TL;DR

The Palfrey reading about Identity was clearly one of my favorites.

I am a Digital Native and I kind of like the sound of that.

I do think that each of my digital identities is a representation of myself and I take that with a grain of salt.

Each of my girls are a part of me and I am a part of them. I see them very clearly in my mind and others can see them too.

I’m not alone.