Segment: Digital Natives – Digital Vanguard

Internet milieu: Digital Vanguard (15%) – 10.3 million

Digital Natives The Digital Vanguard feel right at home in the Internet, and most of them have grown up with it (Digital Natives). They have extensive IT skills and, as a result, spend significant amounts of time online. To this group, being online is not a technical activity. Rather, it represents a description of a situation and, thus, a natural moment of their everyday private and professional lives.

The Digital Vanguard are young, unattached and flexible users from upper, post-modern social milieus. They do not systematically acquire IT knowledge. Instead, they obtain it in a creative, playful manner, that is, intuitively to a large extent. Even though they know that security and data protection are not always assured online, they rarely impose any limits on their activities. Rather, they put their faith in their own skills and their “imagined” self-assurance: “Who is most likely to survive online? – We are!”

In a comparison of types, the Digital Vanguard have the most self-confidence about going online. Drawing on their self-image as representatives of the digital avant-garde, they not only are committed to developing the unlimited possibilities of the Internet, but also view themselves as being at the forefront of a social movement striving for more freedom, participation and democracy. This attitude is reflected in particular by the call for a maximum amount of self-responsibility in terms of security and data protection.

The Digital Vanguard think they are capable of expertly navigating their way through cyberspace and, as a result, think they are immune to the dangers and threats posed by it. This milieu has no understanding for the insecurities of many inexperienced users and their desire for more government control and monitoring. Instead, the Digital Vanguard view the debate about more online security as a guise for further monitoring and control – a change that would serve the interests of business and government, not consumers. As a result of this narrow view, inexperienced users who are insecure as a result of their lack of know-how and thus reject the medium are not the only group that moves out of the picture. The Digital Vanguard themselves also underestimate their own need for protection.

The Digital Vanguard (15%) – 10.3 Mio.

Attitude profile

Communication requirements and needs for action

  • Raise awareness of how to deal with personal data
  • Education about potential security gaps and risks
  • Create an understanding that not all people (can) roam about cyberspace confidently and so are exposed to a higher degree of danger

                                        ________

* Self-evaluation on a scale of 1 = “beginner” to 6 = “expert”
** Agreement with the statement “personal data on the Internet is very secure/secure”