It’s increasingly recognized that children need to be better prepared for lives suffused in digital technologies. As one mother in Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan said, “In my time, someone who was illiterate could not read and write. Now, someone who is illiterate does not know how to use the internet. I don’t want our children to be illiterate. It’s really important.
We want a better future for our kids.”
But what does it mean to be ‘literate’ in the digital era? More broadly, what skills and attributes do children need to avoid online risks and maximize opportunities? These questions have produced a host of responses from parents, teachers, policymakers and academics, most of which can be grouped into two broad concepts – ‘digital (and media) literacy’ and ‘digital citizenship’.
Definitions of both these concepts vary and often overlap, which may affect the design of educational programmes for children – for example, some skills or attributes may be overemphasized at the expense of others.
So how might these concepts be more clearly defined?
*Digital literacy:
Work by Global Kids Online, UNESCO and others strongly emphasizes four sets of abilities. Children should be able to:
Access and operate in digital environments safely and effectively;
Critically evaluate information;
Communicate safely, responsibly and effectively through digital technology; and
Create digital content.
The value of digital literacy is widely recognized. During the 2014 Day of General Discussion on digital media and children’s rights, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child tasked Member States to include digital literacy in their school curricula.
Developing children’s digital and media literacy from an early age has also been identified as a crucial prerequisite for an effective democratic society in the twenty-first century.
*Digital citizenship:
Earlier definitions of digital citizenship were often quite broad, but more recent research supports a narrower definition for several reasons, including to improve the focus of teaching on the subject and to ensure that learning goals are well defined. Two principles are put forward as being at the core of digital citizenship, namely:
Respectful and tolerant behaviour towards others; and
Online civic engagement.
Even if the definitions are sometimes fuzzy, the overall goal of teaching digital literacy and digital citizenship is clear: To equip children with a full portfolio of skills and knowledge that allows them to avoid online risks, maximize online opportunities and exercise their full rights in the digital world. This last point is significant: Findings from Global Kids Online suggest that while most young people share online content and many create videos, they often lack the required digital skills and knowledge to move up the ‘ladder of opportunities’ towards civic participation – a significant area of online opportunity.
(Based on research contributions from Petar Kanchev, Expert of the Safer Internet programme at the Applied Research and Communications Fund in Bulgaria; Sanjay Asthana, School of Journalism, Middle Tennessee State University; and The State of the World’s Children report team…Culled from UNICEF – THE STATE OF THE WORLD’S CHILDREN 2017 (page38)
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