I am a Digital Native

Hi everyone,

So I truly have to confess that I’m a digital native. To confirm this, I have conceded tonight to let my old man (aka Dad) write my blog. Little did I know he’s been gathering little gems over the past few weeks that attests to my place in this generation. Please don’t hold me accountable for the quality of this blog!

Hi all! Jarrod’s Dad here! Thanks for the intro Jarrod, and thanks for the opportunity to write tonight. Like Jarrod mentioned, I’ve been observing him for a while now, and been taking notes that I’d thought you’d like to see how a 7-year-old digital native interacts with the world. So here goes!

You know your son is a digital native when…….

• He’s looking at a webpage of toys for his birthday and says Pin It!
• He does something funny and shouts Post It!
• He says “Dad, I can’t seem to logon”
• Which is closely followed by “Dad, will you please go reboot the router”
• He hands you his Minecraft start-up screen and says “Please sign me in”
• And then says “Ok Dad, you can take your iPad for work, I’ll play on Mom’s as my game is the cloud”
• You’re sitting at a new restaurant and he says “Let’s check in!”
• He’s tired of holding up the iPad to watch a video and says “Dad, please cast this to the TV”
• We’re looking at game characters and we don’t know their names and he says “Google it”
• He keeps notes ‘for his blog’
• He announces “Selfie!!”
• Complains from the back of the car “we’re in a dead spot, there’s no signal here!”
• My worst is “Dad, please can you put your credit number in here, I found a cool app!”
• Someone drops something in the supermarket and he shouts “Epic fail” which is closely followed by “I wish we could’ve filmed that and uploaded it!”
• The theme song from the latest movie comes on and he says “Please add that to my playlist”
• And he’s watching yet another TMNT YouTube video and asks “Please add that to my favourites”
• Watching something on TV can he asks “Why’s the picture pixelated” when there’s too much strain on Netflix / Showmax / YouTube
• You get a new iPhone and its second nature to him that all the apps and data ‘just get restored from the cloud’.
• The I-have-no-more-words comment like “Dad, I found this cool toy on the internet but in another country, but I really need it. All you need to do is click on the Buy Now button!”
• Last but not least, my personal favourite (not that an old codger like me even understands it) he says one day “Dad, can we set up a Minecraft server in the storeroom, so that I can play with you from my Xbox and you on your iPad while you’re at work” I was speechless.

And these are only the ones I can remember and made a note of. One that really stunned me is that I always stream music for Jarrod when drive in the car. However, when we driving into our basement to park, the streaming stops as there’s no cell phone reception down there. So one day instead of streaming I played music through the radio (there’s this old system that uses frequency modulation, FM for short, that broadcasts) and that kept playing in the basement. After reserving into my bay Jarrod pipes up from the back “Dad, if you say there’s no signal in the basement, so the streaming is interrupted, why is the music still playing”. To put it in Jarrod’s language my only reaction was to facepalm and shake my head…… I just can’t sometimes.

Bye for now!

Jarrod’s Dad Norwin