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Battling the Digital Divide

When we stop to think about the benefits from technology and whose getting them, we usually only think about the people that are being smart about the way they use technology, and more often than not we forget about the digital divide. "Technology is often touted as a means for providing new opportunities for learning, economic development, and participation in digital-age citizenry. Unfortunately, these opportunities for advancement are inextricably linked to the possibility of continued disenfranchisement and oppression. Lack of access to technology—or an absence of informed guidance regarding its use—can actually magnify the inequities in students’ education and further limit their opportunities. For these reasons, two of the most fundamental issues ... in education are eliminating digital divides and promoting digital equity" (Williamson, 2013).

Our society is divided in more ways than I can express in one blog post, race, gender, religion, and equality. Why is it that when we think about inequality we overlook the fact that the digital divide might be one of the most significant variables that are impacting people’s education and performance. The reality of things is that technology and access to the internet is no longer only the privileged have, it is something that people NEED in order to be successful in school and in the real world. ‘It has been observed that those with college degrees or higher are 10 times more likely to have internet access at work as than those with only a high school education’ (Stanford University). This is one small example of how big of an advantage people with access to technology receive every day that puts them in better opportunities to succeed. 

Alyssa Kenney explains the 10,000-foot view as that there are 14,000 households disconnected in Dane County. Why that's a problem is because you just today cannot fully participate in society, in democracy, in the economy, in fun. (Lorenzsonn, 2017). The reality of things is that our society has become dependent on access to technology in order to allow someone to stand out, not taking into account the fact that a very large portion of the population simply does not have access to this. ‘Digital equity is defined as equal access and opportunity to digital tools, resources, and services to increase digital knowledge, awareness, and skills.’ (ISTE, 2007). Movements and acts such as the Digital Equity Act have begun to raise awareness and try to combat the issue that is the digital divide. Although this is a change that is much needed, it is a change that will take time and a lot of people will have to become more conscious before it can change.

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Digital Citizenship in the 21st century

Although what being a good digital citizen is a concept that is very open for interpretations, digitalcitizenship.net defines digital citizenship as the continuously developing norms of appropriate, responsible, and empowered technology use. This concept in my opinion is not the same for everyone, because what I may perceive as appropriate social media content may not be the same as the person next to me. Your digital citizenship goes hand in hand with your digital footprint, is the content you posted when you were a hormonal teenager going to come back to haunt you 15 years later when you are an important person in the work place? It is important to not mix up digital citizenship with digital literacy, which is ‘the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills" from the American Library Association’s digital literacy task force. Although two different concepts, they go together because digital literacy is not just about reading on a screen, it is also about content creating in digital formats that showcase who you are, and therefore your digital citizenship.

Transitioning from high school to college to the working place is not easy physically or mentally, and so is the case of being a digital citizen in college and trying to transition to a digital citizen in the work place. What once was acceptable as a college student can trigger a lot of red flags for recruiters and potential employees. Josie Ahlquist tries to simplify the incredibly broad concept by saying, ‘digital citizenship is responsible technology use.’ As maturing young adults it is important for us to sit down and think about what we want to do with our future and if we are going to be in the public eye. The reality of things is that certain people have to be more careful about what they post online, such is the case of aspiring athletes and politicians. 

Corey Fernandez from Fast Company talks about how tricky it is to balance personality and professionalism. I personally don’t think that you have to abandon your personality completely to fit in the professional world, but it is important to be smart with social media, know what to post and where, and if it is the case that you are being watched like a hawk by the public eye, create anonymous accounts for your social media use that no one can track back to you. I think it is of prime importance to educate teenagers about their digital footprint and how their decisions today may affect their lives tomorrow. Your digital citizenship is something that is built throughout many years and is hard to clean up, but with the right education and mentors one can take full advantage of digital literacy without harming your digital citizenship.

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Social Media and Participatory Culture

Social media and developing technologies have allowed our society to be interconnected and give us the opportunity to offer our own thoughts and ideas to society, creating a culture where everyone is encouraged to participate. A participatory culture can be defined as a culture in which members believe that their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another (Jenkins, 2006). Tying this concept back to the very basic idea of digital literacy, one can begin to understand that our society has adapted to technology where social media and the internet drive people to share with others things that they find meaningful, but social media is no longer affecting just our online lives; Hinton & Hjorth (2013) say that the social media sites we use today have developed to support offline activities and have real social, economic, and cultural consequences.

Participatory culture has evolved dramatically as technology also evolves, and has been shaped tremendously by social media, creating a concept called ‘participatory media’ (Jenkins, 2006). The effect that social media had began to be clear in 2011 with Twitter and Facebook, but 8 years later now social media has more and more sites every day, and it has become most people’s favorite method of communication, interaction, and networking. Participatory culture in social media connects to emotions and creativity more than one realizes, many social media sites exist only because of the content created by users, since an active part of media discourses involve creating and forwarding content to other users (Hinton & Hjorth, 2013). 

The main problem I perceive with ‘user created content’ (UCC), is that people tend to shape their personalities and lives to seem perfect on camera. Social media has made our lives very public, and although it brought many great things, it also makes us lose sense of whether we are doing things because we actually like them or because we want ‘likes’. One of the most powerful messages of participatory culture and the dangers of social media is seen on one episode of the Black Mirror series titled ‘Nosedive’. In this episode one can follow the life of Lacie, a girl who lives in a society where users give other people ratings using their phone, shaping their entire lives to try to achieve higher ratings. This episode is one of the most cruel and real episodes ever aired on TV, it is showing the reality that our world is turning into a place where we live our lives trying to impress others and not ourselves. While produsage, particularly in forms such as online activism and citizen journalism, appears to be a very empowering use of social media, there are always issues around the exploitation, and we must be careful to bring a critical eye to any claims of revolutionary change ((Hinton & Hjorth, 2013).

This episode got me thinking about my own use of social media, although I am not someone that highly depends on her phone, I still spend a lot of hours scrolling on my screen. My primary use of social media is to communicate with my family and friends. Being in different countries is not easy but social media has allowed us to stay in touch and not miss out on being part of each others lives. Although I use social media for entertainment purposes as much as any other girl in her 20s, I love to use social media as my primary source for news. I follow a lot of economics, politics, and sports accounts on Twitter that allow me to stay up to date without the need of reading the whole newspaper. 

As Dr. Mimi mentioned, human beings are social beings, so it is only right that as technology evolves and becomes more sophisticated, the way we socialize and interact with one another will also change. It will be interesting to see the new apps and websites that will pop up in the next few years that will make change our social life for better or for worse. I think it would be very beneficial for our society if elementary schools start including a course to teach kids at a young age not only about the dangers of the internet, but also how to use social media as a tool. 

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Blog Post #1

In a world where most of our lives revolve around social media and parents find it harder and harder to protect their kids and what they are seeing online, organizations such as Common Sense Media have made it their mission to build a digital world where kids can thrive. Research shows that mobile device usage amongst kids has increased exponentially for the past 5 years. According to Zero to Eight: Children’s media usage in America, kids from age 0-8 only used mobile devices for 5 minutes daily in 2011, but in 2017 that time rose all the way up to 48 minutes a day. 

Common Sense Media has taken time to understand the different impacts that technology and social media has on people from different backgrounds. One of the most positive effects about their research is from the Latino Center. As a latina myself, I wish I had the opportunity to see the positive effects of digital learning for bilingual kids. While being bilingual opens many doors, speaking two languages also means that you are more exposed to the bad areas and misleading information that one can find in the internet. 

Although technology has granted us with a world of endless possibilities, from learning tools, to business opportunities, to shrinking the way by making communication easier, it has also made the world a more dangerous place. With so much access to information, it is not a surprise that kids find themselves in less than optimal situations. When parents turned to teachers for answers to cyberbullying and other upsetting things that happen in the web, Common Sense decided to partner with Project Zero to launch a free, research-biased education program to support essential digital skills for students. The goal of this project is to ensure that kids from all backgrounds and socioeconomic levels have equal access to the tools and basic safety information they need to surf the internet on their every day lives.

The Pew Research Center of Internet and Technology also found the dangers of social media regarding misleading information, facilitation of political manipulation, and the increase in violence and hate crimes. People all over the world, but especially those in emerging economies are in more danger when exposed to technology. ‘Many who use social media say they regularly see false and misleading content along with new ideas’ says an article published by the Pew Research Center. As people living in America we have seen countless articles about all the misleading information in developing or even communist countries such as Sri Lanka and North Korea.

When the reality of things is that more people are facing the negative effects of the internet, it is our responsibility to educate kids and those less fortunate in how to navigate and use social media to our advantage. Although most of us are aware of the impacts of social media, I none of us are aware of how grave it is until we truly dig deep and do research, this is why research centers such as the Pew and Common Sense Media are so important for our community.