Virtual Natives

18Future Forward: Virtual Natives and the New Tech Landscape

In Part One of this book, we identified the Virtual Natives and what defines them. What we have found is that Virtual Natives are self‐driven, creative, impatient people, casually expert in digital everything, always ready to rethink and replace mechanisms in the modern world that don't make sense, especially traditional structures that may no longer serve their original purpose well. They have been trained by games to have agency, and by Instagram and YouTube to accept and appreciate people from all walks of life. They experiment with both their own identities and how much they can accomplish with artificial intelligence as a sidekick. Because of the reach of their voices and opinions, thanks to digital platforms, and their ability to reshape things through the use of digital tools, Virtual Natives have the potential to be the most powerful and influential generation of young people that our world has seen.

In Part Two, we looked at how the Virtual Native mindset is likely to respond as this generation enters the adult world, and how their expectations and familiarity with digital tools will create both tensions and new solutions as they encounter non‐optimized structures that older folks have gotten used to just shrugging and accepting. This is where the magic will happen, for those bold enough to listen to what this younger cohort has to say, and their ideas for solving problems from their digital mindset. Business ...