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If you're a student at university now, there's a good chance that you're a digital native. You've been born into a time when mobile phones, tablets and wearables are the norm. The research says that you rarely watch TV in real time, you'd rather view YouTube. You don't send letters, you use WhatsApp. You don't use Yellow Pages, you ask Siri. As you're using a range of digital tools to talk, shop and share, some of the older generation of digital immigrants are seeking your help to plan and organise their digital marketing.

The words ‘digital native’ and ‘digital immigrant’ weren't invented by me; they are part of a range of generational cohorts, which are shown in Table 1.3 with selected reference sources for you to explore further.

Some cohorts cross into another generation. This is because there is no official agreement on the terms, nor are they formally defined by government, but mainly by researchers and consultants working in advertising who see the different behaviours developing.

The terms ‘digital native’ and digital immigrant’ are considered by some as being controversial and by others as divisive. The phrases are largely credited to Marc Prensky, who was teaching groups of students and realised there was a marked difference between the students who had always used technology and teachers who were new to this. He described the situation as similar to learning a new language, where immigrants move into a new country and learn the language but it is never their mother tongue, so they might always retain an accent. In the same way he thought that those who had to learn about technology would retain this ‘accent’.

The work has been criticised due to the phraseology and as some people objected to the labels. I'm a digital immigrant but love technology and as an early adopter I could see how it would make life easier. Equally, I sometimes witness students who are digital natives, struggling with newer technologies.

Looking at the most recent group, Generation C, Jessica Dye said this stood for content but commented in her website that it could stand for creativity, consumption or connected. Roman Friedrich and his colleagues at the international management consultancy Strategy& (previously known as Booz & Company) stated that the ‘C’ represented connect, communicate and change. The key factor is that this demonstrated the lack of consensus with these terms.

Table 1.3