Ask HN: Is 30 too old to be a digital native? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is 30 too old to be a digital native?

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I am 37 and I consider myself a digital native. I did start out on super slow modems, but I have been hacking away at things since I was a young kid.

Am 39, have same intuition. In 2nd grade we got Appl IIs. Was BBSing at 13, etc... Certainly not social-network version of the digitalrati though.

WTF is snapchat for? Get off my lawn.

I'm a decade older. I've been into computers since I was probably 12 (Burroughs mainframe). I know what Snapchat is for, but I'm happily married and am happy to stay that way, so I don't much care. It's not that we're unaware, it's that the current crop of entrepreneurs are unaware of the market we represent.

Ok, so what's the psychological/cultural anchor that keeps Snapchat alive and floating? I mean, I understand what's happening mechanically, but I don't get why it would be engaging, entertaining, or lead to compulsive use.

Maybe because I'm introverted and don't care what my friends are eating? I have no insight into the minds and motivations of young women, so maybe that's part of it too. Dunno.

It has some form of hook and reward like instagram, sort of how things are outlined in "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products" by author Nir Eyal. I have a niece that just turned 16, and she uses SnapChat all the time. My 19 year old nephew told me my recently launched food site bestfoodnearme.com would not appeal to the younger crowd because it was not an app. I countered and said there are people out there that do not want to fill their phone with endless apps. I can remember how open and different the internet crowd was in the mid 90's. Things seem so walled off in their own gardens in this modern app world the younger crowd lives in.

I countered and said there are people out there that do not want to fill their phone with endless apps.

Yup...things are in fact different now.

Maybe because I'm introverted and don't care what my friends are eating?

There you go.

In its original context, it probably applies to anyone that was in school (possibly including college) at a time such that their learning methods could have been substantially affected by the changes in media in the last decade of the 20th century; since then, its usually (fairly arbitrarily) been used to describe those born of 1980.

Insofar as its a substantive experience description and not just another term for Gen Y/Millenials, I'd say if you engaged in substantial online interaction and that it substantially affected the way you approach information, learning, and social interaction, during -- or, a fortiori, before -- high school, then you count.

If I understand correctly, I believe a "digital native" to be the equivalent of a "millennial" or a "gen y" person. If so, no, 30 is not too late to be a "digital native".

This would typically be people born 1983 or after. If you are 30, you are more than likely a "digital native".

Those who ran BBS systems wax nostalgic about being early adopters of new communication methods and systems. It's the same with the digi-native set; waxing nostalgic about Geocities and Angelfire homepages when they could be building something to replace them (Like what the Neocities and Snapchat crowd are doing). It's the wrong question. 'Too' in a question puts the onus to answer with an extreme viewpoint

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