I was born at the tail end of the creation of the world. Back then, most people could live in only one way, in the dull reality of one single place at a time. But I had a choice. In my dirty socks, I made regular pilgrimages to the basement, sidling past broken toys and half-folded linens. Our computer was, if I remember correctly, a dusty old Dell. I booted it up the way my mother had taught me. I waited. There was always that chance the connection wouldn’t make it—that AOL’s eerie mechanical music would suddenly falter, buck up, and die, taking all of my hopes down with it.

Back then, I thought that I was a regular earthly creature. I am an animal, therefore I must belong outside with the other animals. I should have known better. I should have known the first time I visited a beach in August heat, slathered in and reeking of high-powered sun goop. Children shrieking everywhere, while tears of sweat ran down the seam of my back. I waded into the ocean and asked for relief, and then it gagged me with salt instead. The message was loud and clear: This sloppy world is no place for someone like me.

They call us digital natives. That is the elaborate sociological term for children raised amid the spoils of the internet. We have grown into people who fuse gracefully with digital technology, into a species that belongs to any biome with a decent computer screen.

It started slowly. My parents bought me computer games, the kind of educational endeavors where a cartoon rabbit teaches you to do long division. Later, a babysitter installed less didactic diversions. Then I started learning to discover websites on my own. I downloaded an instant messaging client and kept myself busy after school perfecting my personal profile. Whenever someone passed behind, I threw my body protectively in front of the screen, even when I was on a totally innocuous page.

Now I can’t remember going a single day without looking at least a few times at a screen. I carry my laptop with me everywhere like some missionary clutching her bible, and open it up at every possible beat between one activity and other. Without thinking, I check the same tabs automatically, looking for a quick hit, fearful I’ve missed something big. It’s just the way we do things here.

I struggle to describe my technological landscape to a friend who doesn’t really care for it. It’s shifting all the time, I stutter, searching for the right metaphor. And yet it’s always exactly the same, too. To compare the internet to, say, a forest—dark, incandescent, mysterious, pulsing with unseen life, rich in dangerous and uncategorized fruit—is to miss the point entirely. Whatever it is, it’s something definitely not found in nature.

For example, today I watched a Chinese woman rap about trust funds in front of Barclay Center; examined the little orange spots of a redditor’s gruesome epidemiological condition; extolled the virtues of bibimbap with a friend in Korea; read up on the pros and cons of purchasing drugs with invisible decentralized currency; tried and failed to dig up Mad Men Season 6 spoilers; tinkered with a Python script designed to pull information from one folder and put it in another; argued politely with strangers on Twitter; looped the same house song several dozen times while attempting to type something earth-shattering in 12-point Arial font. And yet for much of it all, I was the same, immovable face bathed in the screen’s electric glow.

Most animals born into captivity can never truly thrive in the wild. They don’t know how to hunt for themselves, how to run with the pack and keep themselves warm at night. They weren’t there when everyone else learned, so they missed out. It’s the same with us digital natives: We are defined by early exposure to the networked world. Outsiders may dip their toes in our water, but they are not quite made for this kind of living, and their evident struggles make them easy prey. (Of course, my explanation may actually work the other way around. But I prefer not to think that I’ve been raised in cages.)

Supposedly there are many millions of digital natives, though I admit I have trouble recognizing them out in the street. Every so often, there’s a hint of something: an embarrassing slip into shared lingo, a similar tired look. Then the moment drifts away with the breeze. Once, while traveling in Vancouver, I posted on a forum asking for cheap restaurant suggestions. The top answer sent me to a tiny sandwich shop in a hip section of the city, where only one other patron sat savoring a slow lunch. Afterwards, I wrote a short thanks in response. Just went to the panini place. Excellent recommendation!

Just now? he asked. Were you sitting at the table near the door with the books?

Yes. That was me. But I never told him. Knowing that this anonymous user was out there, wandering freely like anyone else, was terrifying. Much better for him to have remained a faceless cog in the machine. I never posted again.

Recently, I picked up chatter somewhere—online, of course—that my way of life is destroying my body. This is an alarming prospect. Experts advise us to take regular breaks from our computer, to move about the world, to practice looking at objects not displayed through liquid glass. I lug a coffee table onto the top of my desk so that I can stand while I surf. In the back of my mind, I worry the spectacle is patently ridiculous. Imagine a cheetah dragging itself onto a treadmill three times a week, a sparrow needing to remember to regularly flap its wings. But then I reassure myself that I’m not really like the other animals. I am a digital native, and that is either natural or unnatural, and it either is or is not the way that I am fated to be.

I can only dimly remember my childhood of disconnection, the time before time. There must be people out there who remain unplugged. I don’t know many of them, but I can picture it. Handwriting their schedules in an expensive black planner. Relying on actual ink-and-paper encyclopedias to look things up. I bet the first thing they do in the morning is not check the messages on their phone, just to spite us.

Yeah, I can see it now. Those smug Luddites probably drive up to the country every weekend to drink chocolate milkshakes at the diner and hike through the dewy woods. If I’m lucky, their friend will post the pictures on Tumblr. Check out the outlook from the mountain’s majestic summit. See the lake below glittering a dark and lovely shade. If I right-click and save to desktop, it’s almost like I went there too.