Topic 1: Digital Residents and Digital Visitors
The concept of the “digital residents” and “digital visitors” continuum (White, 2011) is, in my opinion, a much better summation of people’s digital involvement than the previous “Digital Natives” and “Digital Immigrants” (Prensky, 2001).
A digital “resident” can be seen as an active user of most internet aspects, such as social media posting, content creation, shopping, banking, blogging, etc.
The resident concept can be taken to the extreme as people can earn a living on the internet. Examples of this are YouTube gamers and “vloggers” who can be paid millions of pounds a year for their videos, subsequent event appearances and advertising.
A digital “visitor” is someone who has an arsenal of internet tools and views the internet as more of a means to solve problems or make life easier. These people will use all the popular internet functions of banking, shopping, social media viewing (but not posting) and to solve any problems they may have through any number of forums. These visitors are also the customers for the digital residents who earn a living online.
Whilst there is lots of crossover between the 2 categories the main difference can be seen as how they view the internet as residents “live their life online” socially and professionally whereas visitors “have a goal in mind” when using the internet.
The old concept of “natives” and “immigrants” separates internet users by age and says that old people struggle with the internet whereas young people who have grown up with technology find it easier to use. However this is outdated as websites such as streetlife.com whose “users are male and female, and the majority are aged from 30 to 80” (Streetlife.com, n.d.). This can be used to show that “immigrants” aren’t less capable of using the internet and could, in some cases, be more capable than “natives”.
There are many different components that can be used to make up the residents to visitors spectrum and a lot of the areas many people won’t have any use or interest in such as some online shopping, forums or internet gaming, whereas for others this could be a staple for them. Also as this scale is a very broad scale containing many separate components it can only be used as an accurate judgement for people if they rank themselves on it. Although this will lead to biases and a lack of standardisation. All of these lead to it being hard to strictly define the concept of digital visitors and residents.
In my own experiences I was previously very much a resident on the internet living my life on social media, forums and online games, however over the past 3-4 years I have drifted away from posting on Facebook and Twitter and become more of an observer of other people’s lives, using the internet to solve my problems and carry out tasks that make life more convenient.
References
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon (NCB University Press).
Streetlife.com. (n.d.). Frequently asked Questions. Retrieved from Streetlife.com: https://www.streetlife.com/about/faq/
White, D. S. (2011). Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday.
Jumping Into The Internet 
Hey Sam, I really like the fact that you gave the example of vlogger as an illustration of the term digital resident.
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Hi Sam,
I like your post as it is bringing a bit different example to support the theory then other people have done (including myself). The vlogger idea fits perfectly the resident status, and with the video and the article links you make it more interesting for those who are really interested, with also leaving an option to those who are not so much.
I also like the comparison with the old “immigrant-native” theory, as I personally agree with your opinion about older people’s successful usage of the internet.
I like the fact that you mention your personal change in using social media. I have discovered myself through the past few years, that social media is fun and a good hobby but it is probably more wise not to share all the happenings around your life with hundreds of strangers. However, staying close to social media by observing around can still be beneficial, you might even learn something. Who knows? 🙂
Good luck and I look forward to your future posts.
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Hi Sam,
I enjoyed reading your post and the fact that you showed how residents and visitors support each other was pretty interesting in my opinion. The idea of a vloggers being supported by the visitors was a great idea. Some of the posts just compared the residents to the visitors but you showed how the relationship between the visitor and the residents affect each other and I thought that was well done.
I too feel like i have floated away from the social media sites as I don’t use them as frequently as I did in my previous years.
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