Challenging the myths of "digital natives" and "learning styles"

 Before this week, I had never heard the terms "digital natives" or "digital immigrants." If someone were to have asked me to explain them, my best guess may have been people who work in the technological field versus those who don't. Not a great guess, am I right? But I quickly understood that those are terms to categorize people into two different groups. Those born after and those born before the internet, also implying older and younger generations. They are used to assume the younger generation understands and uses technology better than those older than us. At first, I kind of agreed with this statement. From my experience, it seems to be that way a lot. However, I learned from Visitors and Residents that age is simply not the predominant factor in successfully using technology! The more influential factor is found to be our motivation to engage with technology. I was skeptical about this at first because I engage every day with technology for multiple reasons. But some reasons are that I have to, not necessarily because I am motivated to... I did, however, find the visitors and residents model a better explanation than "digital native" or "digital immigrant." I found that I tend to be a resident on my social media platforms where I connect with a lot of my friends and other people, however in my school life I may use more of that visitor side, as I am going for the purpose of learning and research and then closing out of those "tabs" rather than continuing them in as I do in my social media! Additionally, in my learning this week, I was honestly shocked to find that learning styles are simply a myth. I had always thought of myself as a visual or potentially kinesthetic learner. I like to see how things are done or do them myself. I always thought that this allowed me to learn best. And as shown in The Biggest Myth In Education, many people like myself believed they fit into a learning style. The American Psychological Association actually found that 80-95% of people believe in learning styles! So you can imagine it was a bit of a shock to me to find that learning styles really don't exist. And actually, it does not benefit the people who learn the way they think fits best to them. I have been taught about learning styles my whole life. Told that if I figure out how I learn best, I will become a better student. It was very surprising to learn that this really doesn't affect my academic performance at all!