Martin Owen, Director of Learning at the NESTA Futurelab, takes it one step further. He asserts that while "the notions of digital native and digital immigrant may be useful for slogans to provoke argument[s]"⁵⁴ , Prensky's assertions are totally without foundation. Owen states that statistics show that "the vast majority of children in advanced economies spend less than 30 minutes a day on computer games"⁵⁵ , a figure that is well below Prensky's 10,000 hour lifetime average.

While Prensky contends that time spent playing video games is one of the main contributors to the rewiring of young brains, Owen counters with a statistic that the main demographic for computer games is adults between the ages of 20 and 35 years of age. As well, Owen states that in the United States "the highest usage of the Internet at home is among 35 to 44 year-olds"⁵⁶ , a statistic that places them well beyond the age of Digital Natives.

Owen agrees "that there is a profound change in the way"⁵⁷ that technology is impacting the world. But Owen says Prensky's sloganeering is trivializing something that requires some serious thought and that ultimately Prensky's approach may result in some "bad decision making"⁵⁸ on the part of educators. For Owen nothing replaces "the insights that students receive by struggling to make sense of information with both peers and mentors".⁵⁹

Read Marc Prensky's rebuttal:

Overcoming Educator's Digital
Accents: A Rebuttal