I don’t know about the other teenagers my age, but I personally don’t consider myself a digital native. I grew up with the old school internet where everything was slow to load up.

 I was born in 2003, I grew up middle class. I had a box computer that took forever to load up videos and games. The most vivid memory I have of that box computer was trying to play Poptropica. The loading screen would be on display for hours before letting me play the game.

 I also had a Playstation 2. The oldest Playstations wouldn’t save video game progress unless you had a memory card inserted in it, and even then the card only held like 8 gigabytes of data. I never had the memory cards to save my data. I had to put a shirt over the console to keep my parents from seeing it was on and turning it off.

I didn’t get a phone until I was 11, it was a flip phone. I remember having to type out messages. If you have never used a flip phone where you have to press the button a few times to get the right letter, you don’t fully appreciate smartphones. I didn’t get a smartphone till I was 13, even then it was a cruddy phone. Nowadays children 10 and older have the newest smartphones available. I still remember when iPhones were thick and blocky instead of paper-thin as they are now.

I can not and will not answer computer or phone questions. I only know the bare basics of working on a computer. I still find different tricks and shortcuts on my phone by messing around in the settings. I recently found out that I can change my wallpaper in my messages to something different for every contact.

I don’t believe that my age group is magical with technology but I can’t speak for everyone. I am horrible at using technology, but I’m sure that there are other people who are masters at it. So please, don’t ask me a question about how to work a computer or cellphone.