The place of digital nativity and digital immigration on internet accessibility and usage by students and lecturers of tertiary institutions of learning in Delta State, Nigeria

Abstract

There is a scholarly divide on the propriety of the notion of digital nativity and digital immigration. In contrast, one side of the range postulates that digital nativity and digital migration influence adoption of digital technologies, the other side contends that the concept is instead an unsubstantiated over-generalization. This study interrogates the role of digital nativity and digital immigration play in Internet usage by students and lecturers of tertiary institutions of learning in Delta State, Nigeria. We adopted the Technology Acceptance Model, which explains factors that motivate people to accept and use a particular technology. We used a questionnaire to gather data from 1,200 respondents and analyze the data using descriptive and inferential statistics. We found the students and lecturers had sufficient Internet access, and there is no significant differential in their access to the Internet. However, there is a substantial difference in their frequency of using the Internet as the students tended to use the Internet more frequently than the lecturers do. Also, there are significant differences in the pattern of students' and lecturers' Internet usage. We recommend that lecturers and students should increase their accessibility to the Internet, and lecturers should increase their frequency of Internet usage.