Having read the articles on digital Visitors and Residents, I do agree more with the concept of digital Visitors and Residents as opposed to Prensky’s typology of digital natives and immigrants, which focuses heavily on age and competence. White and Cornu (2011) states that the model of digital Visitors and Residents is like a continuum and it is influenced by people’s motivation to engage with the Internet. Visitors usually use the Internet with a goal to achieve in mind, without leaving any traces online. Whereas, Residents go online to engage with people and leave traces online even after they go offline. As for me, I am in the middle of the continuum as I am a visitor when I use the Internet for a specific purpose like school or work, and I am a resident mainly for my social platforms.
To a certain extent, I do agree that age and competence do play a part in how fluent people are in the digital world. However above age and competence, I believe that the desire to learn is the key to how adept people will be with digital platforms. Regardless of your age and level of competency, as long as you have the desire to learn you would be willing to explore on your own and find out how different things work, for example through consulting someone who is more experienced, searching online for tutorials etc. But of course, some people may be faster in mastering the skill, some may be slower. For myself, I am considered a digital native but that does not mean that I am naturally better at technology. I am rather bad at creative technology, such as Photoshop and video editing tools. However, I realised that many marketing related job requirements include the need for design knowledge, which in turn creates my desire to brush up my design skills.
All these brought me to question if the different behaviours displayed by digital Visitors and Residents will affect us as marketers and if these brings on any implications for digital marketing. One thing for sure is we need to take the behaviour differences into consideration when planning our website or doing an online campaign.
What do you think? Let me know your thoughts below! 🙂
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References
White, D. S., & Le Cornu, A. (2011). Visitors and residents: A new typology for online engagement. [Online]. First Monday. Available at: http://firstmonday.org/article/view/3171/3049%20https://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~tefko/Courses/Zadar/Readings/Selwyn%20dig%20natives,%20Aslib%20Proceedings%202009.pdf [Accessed on 3 Nov 2016]
Living & Working on the Web 
Hi Liting, I think you did a great explanation in comparing Prensky and White and Cornu’s model. It’s true that the older generations may be disadvantaged in the technology aspect as they are not “brought up” with that exposure. But I must say, my mum shares more photos than me on her Facebook! (Maybe I will get her to follow you haha) Thanks for reminding me that me, as a digital native, does not exactly have all the technology skills.
It’s great to read a slightly different viewpoint that made me reflect on my stand. I missed the part where I also made use of internet with a goal in mind to achieve task.
I like how you ended off with a question for me to think about, which is relevant to my course of study. I am sure that knowing and segmenting the different group of users affect the marketing department. It’s good that we know who are the ones who wants to find out about your company and read on the comments to evaluate on your company OR who are the ones post about your company that will influence the choice of others.
Look forward to more question for me to think about! (:
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