By Dr. Mike Ribble
Practicing empathy, offering assistance, and staying safe are good behaviors online and off.
Walk down the street, look around in a restaurant, or watch people waiting in line and you’ll notice how fully technology has become integrated into our daily lives. Views of technology and its place in society can be seen in movies, television, and cultural references.
It has become such a part of what we do and who we are that it become to be defined as a sort of “digital” citizenship. So what describes a digital citizen?
In my book Digital Citizenship in Schools, I define a digital citizen as someone who shares ideas, makes purchases, plans activities, asks for answers, interacts both at work and in play and much more on digital devices (computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc.). In short: living within a digital world.
The technology has provided great opportunities for everyone using technology. These tools have increased our productivity and knowledge base in many ways (checking the weather, looking up facts), but these advantages come with a price. Now, by increasing these opportunities to connect, collaborate and engage with our personal and professional networks requires using and understanding these tools differently. Engaging in these behaviors forces us to act in new and sometimes conflicting ways—to be more social but also more individually focused on our technology. These opportunities to find and share information have increased our dependence on technology.
Being overly connected is resulting in FMO (Fear of Missing Out) or worrying what others are doing, saying, posting, liking, or friending at any time. This has become such an issue that some will keep their devices near them even when they go to bed (and will wake up and post/Tweet/chat in the middle of the night). How can users balance this idea of ultimate knowledge with being with others IRL (In Real Life)?
As with everything there is balance. There needs to be an interaction of our two sides, our digital life and our real life. As our lives become overwhelmingly influenced by our digital interaction, we need a new set of rules to guide our behaviors.
It’s easy to lose touch with humanity when engaging with an online community, but being a digital citizenship means having empathy in all that we do. Having empathy is important in any context. However, in our real lives there are many more cues to guide our behaviors and to signal if there is an issue (facial cues, head nodding, a smile). Reading the written word can make it difficult to judge emotions in a digital environment. Online, systems have attempted to help—think emojis—but the lack of direct contact can make this process more difficult. This means communicating in a digital world requires more thought and time to consider the impact of our words, pictures, and videos.
As with everything there is balance. There needs to be an interaction of our two sides, our digital life and our real life. As our lives become overwhelmingly influenced by our digital interaction, we need a new set of rules to guide our behaviors.
It’s easy to lose touch with humanity when engaging with an online community, but being a digital citizenship means having empathy in all that we do. Having empathy is important in any context. However, in our real lives there are many more cues to guide our behaviors and to signal if there is an issue (facial cues, head nodding, a smile). Reading the written word can make it difficult to judge emotions in a digital environment. Online, systems have attempted to help—think emojis—but the lack of direct contact can make this process more difficult. This means communicating in a digital world requires more thought and time to consider the impact of our words, pictures, and videos.
Read more of the article here.
Dr. Mike Ribble is director of technology for a district in Kansas. He is co-chair of ISTE’s Digital Citizenship Professional Learning Network (PLN).
Articles was originally published on E School News.
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