The new digital era brings new way of thinking, acting and decision making, by implementing new digital devices into everyday life. The way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life is continuously changing by the impact of digital media. All these changes have led to a new category of population, named by a new definition - a digital native. It is defined as a youth, aged 15-24 inclusive, with five years or more experience using the Internet. Digital natives are: highly connected, want quick access to information, want customization, are able to process parallel sources of information, and most important - have never experienced a ‘pre-digital’ world. Our research is needed in order to understand the impact that digital natives have in the modern ICT society, and on the way digital natives learn, work and do things. Young people today learn and adapt to ICTs quickly. In other words, in their hands and with their minds, ICTs become a necessary and powerful tool. In 2012 there were around 363 million digital natives out of a world population of nearly 7 billion. This means that 5.2 % of the world’s population and 30% of 15-24 year olds engaged in continuous activity online. The digital natives are, globally speaking, a minority of today’s youth. Within the next five years, therefore, the digital native populations in the developing countries will more than double, assuming no drop-outs from Internet usage among the youth population. Under this model, a simplifying assumption is made that once someone in their youth starts to use the Internet they continue to use it year after year. This is called the monotonicity assumption. Furthermore, young people are more likely to be online than the general population as a whole. In addition, there is a strong correlation between a nation’s ICT and the percentage of its population that are digital natives.
Digital native population, digital literacy, country’s level of devel- opment, mobile devices.
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