Growing Up Digital

Digital Literacy Lessons from Sixth Graders 

Middle school students share candid insights into balance, curiosity, and technology, showing how young learners can help shape healthier approaches to digital wellness for families and schools alike.

Classic parental advice about kids’ phone and computer use often sounds like this: keep devices in public areas, limit screen time, follow the dos and don’ts, and remember that the internet can be a dangerous place.

The problem? Those approaches aren’t working.

Kids may be able to recite the rules, but they often apply their own unstated personal metrics when making decisions online.

Post-pandemic, kids’ devices have become more than a link to family and friends. They are now a default source of socialization, schoolwork, entertainment, and more. Computers, tablets, and phones serve as cornerstones of classrooms, connecting students to curriculum and enabling collaboration. With so much of life lived through the conduit of a device, classic guidelines are increasingly outdated, and because every family is unique, a one-size-fits-all approach to device use is ineffective.

For the past two years, a group of University of Michigan faculty has partnered with Ann Arbor Public Schools to explore a different approach: working directly with middle school students to reimagine digital wellness. By leveraging the insights of young users alongside established safety and security best practices, the project has developed personalized approaches that reflect the realities of students and their families.

So, What Is Digital Wellness? 

Since 2015, scholars have used the term “digital wellness” to describe both digital behaviors and overall well-being when interacting with technology. This encompasses children’s and adults’ attachment to their devices, their understanding of online privacy and security, and their attitudes and behaviors, including impulsivity in responding to notifications, posture, multitasking, and screen time (McMahon and Akin, 2021). Our work builds on this holistic approach through age-appropriate discussions, activities, and pedagogy that help students develop practices suited to their own family lives.

Why Work with Sixth Graders?

Sixth grade is a critical transition year in which students shift to having more autonomy over their learning and their social lives, and it is when many students get their first personal cell phone or device. Most sixth graders do not yet use social media; instead, they commonly use their devices for streaming video, playing games, texting, or using FaceTime. This intervention point allows us to journey alongside sixth graders as they’re forming their personal device habits, rather than working to alter them after the fact.

Our current CRLT-funded pilot efforts partners with one sixth-grade homeroom each at Ann Arbor’s Scarlett, Clague, and Tappan Middle Schools. The sixth graders collaborate with U-M students, called “near-peers,” in our course, “Understanding Digital Wellness: Creating Peer-to-Peer Interventions with Middle School Students.” Sixth graders visit the U-M campus for two half-day, interactive workshops; then, U-M students visit the middle schools to help students design wellness campaigns or activities for their schools.

What We’ve Learned from Sixth Graders

Sixth graders have a lot to say about their device use and have taught us the following:  

1. About half of sixth graders do not yet have a personal device or cell phone, though they often feel like they are the very last person to have one.
   
   

2. Middle schoolers are eager to explore and discuss their digital lives if they feel they are in a safe, non-judgmental environment.
   
   

3. “Near peers” are effective facilitators because middle schoolers see them more as older siblings they can confide in than as supervising adults.
   
   

4. Middle schoolers keenly observe their parents/caregivers and critique that these adults frequently do not follow the digital wellness guidelines they impose on children.
   
   

5. Most do not realize that apps are designed to be addictive, but they can recognize addictive features once introduced to them.
   
   

6. Most agree that a balanced approach to technology makes sense to them (e.g., doing OK in school, getting good sleep and exercise, having friends, and spending some time online). 

If you, or someone you know, is caring for a digitally connected child, the best step is to act early. Tap into their curiosity, explore technology alongside them, and keep conversations about digital wellness casual and ongoing. Normalizing these discussions creates a collaborative approach that leads to healthier, more sustainable results.

Bibliography

McMahon, Ciaran, and Mary Aiken. 2021. “Introducing Digital Wellness: Bringing Cyberpsychological Balance to Healthcare and Information Technology.” 2015 IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology; Ubiquitous Computing and Communications; Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing; Pervasive Intelligence and Computing, Liverpool, UK, 2015, pp. 1417-1422, doi: 10.1109/CIT/IUCC/DASC/PICOM.2015.212.