Digital literacy evolved while parents weren’t looking — here’s what today’s kids need to know. 🤳
Kids already know what chat rooms and hashtags are. Here’s why we have to teach beyond typing speed & text speak.
You’re currently making casual use of a power that remained highly restricted for millennia. Authority figures everywhere were carefully keeping this skill set away from the common people. Ancient elites needed the very best tools to manage detailed information. How else were they going to run industries, lead religions, and manage empires? This led them to create the concept of written words. That’s why literacy has always held power: it has always been a prerequisite for success. For elites, for you, and for the next generation.
In the early 1800's, 88% of the world couldn’t even read and write. But authorities and educators realized literacy’s crucial importance to improving our societies’ quality of life. This understanding led to countries around the globe reaching an epoch of generally literate society. For most of the last century, the world’s literacy has increased by about 5% a year. You and me, we’re living on the flip-side: by now, about 88% of the world can prove literacy at a basic level. We’re helping developing countries catch up. Logically, we should hit 100% soon, right? Well what if I told you that literacy in the United States, an assuredly developed country, has stagnated for the past 5 years. Recently, literacy declined to a level from decades ago. Have we failed to evolve the way we’re teaching literacy?
Our teaching needs to evolve because literacy has always evolved. When we first started teaching literacy, it was about reading and writing, mastering language. A couple epochs later, we added on the responsibility of understanding the true meaning of a paragraph, or a whole essay. A couple epochs later, we had to figure out interactions with electronic devices, because a lot of our reading is on screens — we had to discover digital literacy. But even that has become old news, if we open our eyes.
Nowadays even kindergartners are using the Internet to contact people outside their family. Yes, for real (page 8). We already know kids and teens spend a huge amount of time on devices and they understand how to use their devices, usually way better than adults. So kids are already doing more and more online, and we keep on teaching them how to get online, but no one’s teaching them about… what happens online.
“Instead of focusing on what’s on the screen, we’re focused on whether or not they can work the device. Those are two very different things.” — Julie Todaro, president of the American Library Association.
Here’s the literacy today’s students should know about. Beyond technological know-how, digital literacy is now a wide variety of guidelines for ethics, safety, and social well-being. It affects every academic field, not to mention our personal lives. Here are some of the most important aspects every student should become comfortable with:
- Managing reputation and security online: understanding data collection techniques, malware & hackers, staying aware of their digital footprint.
- Navigating highly commercialized online environments: recognizing and interpreting advertising and consumerism, becoming responsible consumers online.
- Managing screen time & dealing with digital media’s effects concerning body image, loneliness, relationships, and more.
- Making empathetic and ethical decisions in digital environments with issues such as cyber-bullying, privacy & sharing content.
- Effectively searching for information, authenticating and evaluating sources. Cross-checking information, recognizing biases and understanding information bubbles. Critical analysis and problem solving. To see our tips you can implement in an afternoon, subscribe to stay tuned for our latest episode of Nectar. We’ll also show you how to balance online life with social and personal well-being.
Everyone, especially children, will encounter these dilemmas whether they’re trained to or not. Want to be assured your loved ones will make smart decisions? Use these up-to-date tips as a jumping off point when you teach your kids and teens about using electronics and the Internet.
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This post was written by Fran Mbadiwe, an editor who runs SBOC’s Buzz News. Apart from that, he’s probably journaling.
