Marc Prensky coined the term ” digital natives ” in 2001 to describe the generation that’s grown up surrounded by plugs, pixels, and screens. Two films out this month, Catfish, a documentary about an online relationship, and The Social Network , on Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, are giving critics the opportunity to try and best Prensky with their own monikers:
Manohla Dargis, The New York Times : The boot-up, log-on, plug-in generation
Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York : Generation InternetJohn Griffin, The Montreal Gazette : The social-networking, mobile-device-dependent, electro-communicating Gen Y kids
Prairie Miller, News Blaze : Youtube generation
Corey Hall, The Metro Times : The social-networking gen
Some especially ambitious critics have gone even further, trying to label the entire age in which we live:
Constance Droganes, Sympatico : The Facebook-age
The Toronto Sun : The me, me, me decade
Gary Thompson, The Philadelphia Daily : The anonymous Internet age
Joshua Alston, Newsweek : The news-feed age