Digital Problem or Digital Solution - Which One are You?
Jordan W. H. Hopkins
Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas
As I began this class, I had not given any serious thought to a difference between being a good citizen and a good digital citizen. My behavior online mirrors my behavior offline. However, as I read through Ribble’s 9 elements of digital citizenship and their 3 categories, I had a bit of a paradigm shift. He looks at the 9 as interconnected and grouped as:
Respect Your Self/Respect Others
Educate Yourself/Connect With Others
Protect Yourself/Protect Others
The Education category includes Communication, Literacy and Commerce; the Protection category includes Rights and Responsibility, Safety, and Health and Welfare; and the Respect category includes Etiquette, Access and Law. As educators at various levels, it is our responsibility to continue to stay up to date with the latest technology tools, both for positive use for students, and for negative use in order to keep them safe from harm. We are tasked with protecting them while they are our responsibility, as well as preparing them to remain safe when they are not under our supervision. While we all have rights to digital access, with those rights come responsibilities. Not only do we need to protect our students online, we need to teach them to be responsible when it comes to letting an adult know when they see something online that could be harmful to others. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of people attempting to use the internet for bad, finding any means necessary to cause damage through viruses, for instance. We must educate our students on methods people use to spread viruses, and things we can do to avoid falling prey to them.
Health and welfare is an interesting area when it comes to digital citizenship. While we all enjoy the benefits of having so much information available to us at any moment, we also must realize that too much screen time can be unhealthy. We need to move away from the screen and enjoy in person activities and those involving physical activity. When I see entire families out at dinner, every member’s interest glued to an electronic device, I can’t help but worry about what we are letting electronics do to our families. I remember time in my rocker watching educational television, but today’s children seem to be glued to devices, instead of their parents.
With every bit of information we could ever need in the palms of our hands, it is also our responsibility to make sure that all segments of society have access to full electronic participation (Ribble, 2015). In a previous course, I had an a-ha moment about this particular topic. While most people have smart phones today, there are still many that don’t. If we asked every member of our LU program how many fully-functional unused phones they had in a drawer at home, we could pool them together and make a huge difference in the lives of many. While the phones might not be active, the ability to use them as a smart device on-line is.
Digital Commerce is an area that has exploded in recent years. I now Venmo my rent and buy many things through Amazon online. Unfortunately, our world-wide-web has given scammers the ability to take advantage of people financial from every corner of the world. Again, as educators, we need to take the time to make our students aware of this fact, and provide the tools to prepare them to be smart shoppers on the web.
Digital Literacy or Fluency is another important topic to cover with our students. I compare many areas of the internet to The Enquirer. We still have people that believe if they see it on the internet, it must be true. We have to do a better job of teaching our students how to discern good from bad information and data on line.
Digital Security and Privacy is an area that needs to be taught from the earliest age possible. Recently, I heard a news story somewhere that warned people against using public chargers at airports, because your information could be stolen. Using hotel internet can also compromise your personal information. You can never be completely safe, as there are always people coming up with new ways to take advantage of innocent internet users, but it is important for us to teach students the importance of security when using devices.
My specific project for the remainder of my time here at Lamar University will involve Digital Communication and Collaboration, Digital Etiquette and Digital Rights and Responsibilities. There are endless positive reasons to communicate and collaborate digitally. One of our biggest recruiting tools is actually Twitter. As coaches, we are expected to keep an active presence on Twitter, always keeping it factual and positive. As a football coach, there is no end to the number of negative comments that can be found on sports message boards. We here at Lamar are doing our part to “keep it positive.”
This leads right in to Digital Etiquette. I continue to believe that the decline of personal, face-to-face interaction, and the rise of device-to-device interaction has caused a generation of people to post responses to message boards or Twitter that they would never say directly to a person. While the initial post might seem impersonal, the recipient will feel the same negative blow while knowing that thousands of other people might see it, too. While late night talk show hosts get quite a few laughs from having pro athletes and celebrities read “mean Tweets” posted about them, and the recipient of those Tweets is thick skinned enough to find the humor in them, most people cannot, especially younger victims of cyberbullying cannot.
Cyberbullying Statistics from internetsafety101.org provides some very alarming statistics. Twenty-five percent of teenagers have been bullied through internet or cell phones repeatedly. Over half of all young people report being cyberbullied, and 55% of teens that use social media have reported seeing it done to others. Of these that have witnessed it, only 5% reported it to anyone - 95% simply ignored it. Less than 25% of cyberbully victims told a parent.
With these numbers, we are really dropping the ball on letting students know they not only need to report it when they are the victims, but also when they are witnesses. We have got to do a better job of teaching compassion from the first day a student enters the public school doors. News reports are filled with stories of young people that either take their own life after suffering at the hands of cyberbullies, or those that chose to take lives after years of being bullied. We have to pay attention at all levels - be aware of situation, and do everything in our power to stop it. We must teach compassion and empathy in schools.
I am reminded of my time in speech classes in junior high, high school, and even college, and the fact that more is communicated through non-verbal than verbal. If we have a generation that communicates primarily through text, they have no opportunity to see the non-verbal expression that accompanies the words. This makes me wonder if that is part of the reason more and more people seem to have little to no regard for posting negative, mean, and or harmful things online - they are just key strokes without a visual, human reaction.
This brings me back to my original project thoughts. I can’t turn back time, but I can use the time that I have left with my college student athletes to stress the importance of doing their parts to be good digital citizens. I can help them learn to ignore negative or mean spirited comments by strangers about their athletic performance. I can help them understand that jumping into the mud with someone serves no positive purpose. I can hopefully help them work towards posting positive responses whenever possible. And because they will be graduating from Lamar University in 1 to 4 years ready to enter the professional work force, I can teach them the positive benefits about creating a positive digital footprint from today forward.
Cyber Problem or Cyber Solution, Which One are You?
Work Cited
Cyberbullying statistics, retrieved from http://internetsafety101.org/cyberbullyingstatistics.htm
Ribble, M. (2015). Digital citizenship in schools: Nine elements all students should know (3rd ed.). Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.