DIGITAL NATIVE IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT IN VIRTUAL WORLDS

Abstract

In the transition from childhood to adolescence, teens are engaged in defining who they are and find-ing a place in the wide world creates insecurity. Digital natives are growing up as part of digital gen-eration where technology is ubiquitous in a young person’s life. One online technology commonly used by digital natives are virtual worlds. Increasingly, they have come to rely on this digital media to help them navigate the challenges and issues they face in this period of life. This paper presents a re-search framework designed to provide a road map for the IS community in conducting research into this new and exciting area of virtual worlds and their impact on digital native identity development