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EDTECH
A Critical Approach to Digital Citizenship:
What You Should Tell Your Kids About the Internet
by Mark Roquet
| The goal is not to tell students what to think or how to act, but to help them unpack the complicated choices they will face individually and at a societal level. |
A CRITICAL APPROACH TO DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP
The internet is a weird place. In its early years, its curious openness, illicit backstreets, and raucous (and sometimes horrifying) behavioral norms felt like a curiosity, a foreign land that users could dip into (and out of) when they felt like it. Most educators are old enough to remember when the internet was distinct from everyday life and could be turned off at will. As networked technology has pervaded every part of our daily lives, this relationship has fundamentally shifted. Digital citizenship education hasn’t kept up with the rapid pace of change, and it generally still reflects a previous era in which the internet was, for many people, a fun way to communicate with friends and shop. We need a broader approach to digital citizenship—one that looks beyond communication and safety to empower students and help them develop the skills, knowledge, and critical perspectives necessary to understand, challenge, and improve our digital society.
CRITICAL DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP DEFINED
Early digital citizenship responded to the proliferation of chat rooms and instant messaging; readers my age may remember watching VHS tapes encouraging us to surf safely by keeping our passwords secret and not agreeing to meet strangers. As social networks came to dominate online communication, digital citizenship shifted to sharing responsibly and curating a digital footprint. A third era has just begun, responding to the 2016 election and online social ills such as disinformation and hate speech. These efforts have been important and valuable, but too often, digital citizenship curriculum has been prescriptive—do this, don’t do that, be careful with this —when we should also be helping students to explore, think critically, and come to their own conclusions about the major social changes and challenges wrought by the internet.
The challenge facing digital citizenship education is looking beyond the individual—specifically, considering and teaching about systems, relationships, and change. The discipline of civics might provide a useful lens. Civics education isn’t just about telling students what they should do (vote, follow the law) and shouldn’t do (commit crimes, stage insurrections). Civics classes also look at the development of the constitution and investigate how, throughout our history, citizens have organized to make change. The ultimate goal is to develop knowledgeable, empowered, responsible citizens. Similarly, in digital citizenship, we must help students understand systems and history and to develop the knowledge and skills to be empowered agents of change. I’m also drawing inspiration from the work of information science scholars such as James Elmborg and Barbara Fister on critical information literacy, which asks librarians to co-investigate with students the systems of power and oppression built into our information landscape.
Critical digital citizenship invites students to explore the political, social, and economic dimensions of our digital society, identify the ways our digital society facilitates systems of oppression, and build capacity to make our digital society more equitable and humane. It encourages students to look at systems, while also considering individual actions and responsibilities.
EMPOWERING STUDENTS TO BECOME DIGITAL CHANGEMAKERS
I’ll propose some topics that critical digital citizenship might address. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it’s meant to be illustrative of the types of current and emerging topics that will help students become engaged digital citizens. The goal is not to tell students what to think or how to act, but to help them unpack the complicated choices they will face individually and at a societal level.
Economics and Digital Platforms
Adults often assume that as digital natives, students understand the internet quite well. Students may understand the social mores of Snapchat and Instagram, but they often don’t understand how these services leverage user data for profit. The business models of companies such as Amazon or Google can be even more opaque; my students were shocked to learn that Amazon’s profits are increasingly driven by advertising and cloud services rather than retail sales. Students deserve to know how these companies operate, so they can make informed decisions and imagine different possibilities for future digital society—for example, revenue streams that don’t leverage users’ private data for profit.
One of the best ways for students to explore these topics is by investigating the internet industry and learning how technology companies function. By looking back at the history of the industry, from ARPANET to widespread adoption of the internet and eventually Web 2.0, students can understand that our present situation was not inevitable, but the result of deliberate choices by individuals and industries. Much of the news around Silicon Valley is of high interest to young people, but they often lack the knowledge required to fully engage with these developments. Additionally, students should investigate, discuss, and debate issues around privacy and advertising. Students should also grapple with the changes wrought by the sharing economy, including labor protections and nondiscrimination laws.
Big Data
Our society is increasingly driven by algorithms, including advertising and the criminal justice system. As recent books such as Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, and Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor show, these algorithms are not value-neutral, but laden with very human biases. Students generally have an understanding of targeted advertising, but often don’t realize all the data being gathered about them, from items such as wearable technology and via the information gathered from the educational apps they use in school. Additionally, they often don’t understand some of the ways that Big Data is used (such as promoting environmentally responsible living, improving medical diagnoses, and in financial and criminal justice decision making). Students should engage with these issues both as consumers—who, even at a young age, are making choices that impact the privacy of their data—and as citizens and future leaders who must decide what role consumers, companies, and regulations should play in safeguarding private data and algorithmic decision making.
Harassment and Hate
Too often, we tell students to be nice on the internet—and stop there. Drawing from national discourse around polarization and politics after the 2016 election, educators appeal to students to practice civility and disagree respectfully. However, when we demand civility without acknowledging historic inequities that have privileged some voices and silenced others, we reinforce systems of oppression. Students must finish school with a more honest view of the world and a recognition of their own responsibility in identifying and interrupting systems that perpetuate bias and inequity. Children are naturally curious, and they notice the pervasive racism, sexism, and homophobia on the internet—and the way some people are given more space than others. When parents, teachers, and other adults in their lives are silent about this, it sends a clear message to children. Silence is complicity, particularly for educators from privileged identities.
None of this is to say we shouldn’t teach students how to disagree constructively or emphasize empathy and kindness. All of this matters. But we must also help students understand behavior on the internet and give them the space and support to think about how to interrupt toxic internet culture on an individual and societal level. This work also can’t happen in isolation; it should be part of cross-curricular, schoolwide equity work. In the digital citizenship context, this can include looking at the relative merits of online anonymity, discussing how social media companies facilitate and profit from bigotry, and looking at case studies such as #metoo or #OscarsSoWhite in which historically marginalized groups were able to attract attention and spark dialogue to make change.
Filter Bubbles
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, there was much discussion about factionalization and echo chambers in online discourse. The algorithmic filters through which we see the internet (from social media feeds, search results, and personalized news interfaces) are largely invisible to us. In 2016, The Guardian asked partisan voters to interact with a Facebook feed curated with opposing political ideas; one Republican voter said he didn’t realize that “positive stuff about Hillary Clinton” even existed on the internet. In this ecosystem, it’s difficult for readers to find both sides of a story—and, with increasing amounts of misinformation and hate online, there aren’t always two valid perspectives to consider. Education about filter bubbles, then, must do more than encourage students to seek out both sides of an argument. Students should also be investigating, discussing, and debating social media and news algorithms that create filter bubbles and talking about how these systems could instead facilitate the open exchange of diverse ideas and perspectives without creating platforms for distortion, misinformation, and hate.
Utopianism and Dystopianism
Throughout history, new technologies have been welcomed as liberating, empowering, and enriching. At the dawn of television, many pundits expected its future use to be primarily educational, and for many years, we were promised less work and more leisure as tasks became automated. At the same time, the history of technology is replete with panics that now seem quaint and laughable. In the 1930s, parents were concerned that the radio would keep their kids from completing their homework, while 70 years later, CNN was warning that email was more damaging to cognitive ability than smoking pot. Students should explore narratives about technology in the past and make connections to their own thinking and current discussions about technology (such as in Fortnite and educational apps).
Activism and Change
A lot of attention is paid to the internet as a vehicle for change—such as with the Arab Spring and the #metoo movement. Less attention is paid to the impact humans can have on technology and how individuals and groups can change—through activism, regulation, or consumer choice—the future of technology. Students need to know that the internet can both change and be a vehicle for change. Too often, we talk about the internet as a monolith, as if its future is outside of human control—as Evgeny Morozov argues in To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, we fall for the illusions of technological determinism and solutionism. Students should look at the ways humans have endeavored to change technology, such as the pushback on Facebook’s real-name policy and the current debates about regulation in response to Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election through social media. In addition to looking at organized social intervention, students should consider how technologies rise and fall through both invention and consumer choice.
BUT HOW?
The topics mentioned offer examples of the sort of issues that might come up in critical digital citizenship instruction. The challenge for educators is a dearth of existing curricula, particularly for younger students. On the bright side, many of these issues lend themselves to reading, discussion, and debate; this is more in line with a critical, co-investigatory approach than lectures, instructional videos, or worksheets. I’ve found success using an adapted version of Kelly Gallagher’s Article of the Week and Dave Stuart’s Pop-up Debate structures to engage upper elementary and middle school students in spirited, open-ended discussions around technology, ethics, and civics. The Stanford History Education Group has done fantastic work around digital information literacy, and it is currently rolling out a Navigating Digital Information crash course program on YouTube with John Green. Finally, traditional digital citizenship organizations (such as Common Sense Media) are starting to expand their own definitions of digital citizenship with new lessons focused on news literacy and responding to online hate.
None of this work is easy, and as the landscape around society and technology continues to change, digital citizenship will need to keep pace with it. As the internet challenges our society in unprecedented ways, educators must be there—not to tell students what to think, but to help them develop the knowledge, critical thinking skills, and agency to become empowered digital citizens. Our future depends on it.
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Resources
Common Sense Education. Retrieved from commonsense.org/education.
Crash Course (2019). Introduction to Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #1. Retrieved from youtube.com/watch?v=pLlv2o6UfTU.
Digital Literacy. Retrieved from Teaching Tolerance website: tolerance.org/frameworks/digital-literacy.
Elmborg, J. (2006). “Critical Information Literacy: Implications for Instructional Practice.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 32(2), 192–199. doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2005.12.004.
Eubanks, V. (2017). Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Fister, B. (2013, Aug. 26). “Practicing Freedom in the Digital Library.” Retrieved from The Digital Shift: www.thedigitalshift.com/2013/08/uncategorized/practicing-freedom-in-the-digital-library-reinventing-libraries.
Gallagher, K. (2009). Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It. Portsmouth, N.H.: Stenhouse Publishers.
Morozov, E. (2013). To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. New York: PublicAffairs.
Noble, S.U. (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: New York UP.
O’Neil, C. (2016). Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. New York: Crown.
Stuart, D.R. (2019). These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin.
Tewell, E. “Putting Critical Information Literacy Into Context: How and Why Librarians Adopt Critical Practices in Their Teaching.” In the Library With the Lead Pipe, 12 Oct. 2016, inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2016/putting-critical-information-literacy-into-context-how-and-why-librarians-adopt-critical-practices-in-their-teaching.
Tewell, E. (2015). “A Decade of Critical Information Literacy: A Review of the Literature.” Communications in Information Literacy, 9(1). doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2015.9.1.174.
Wong, J.C., Levin, S., & Solon, O. (2016, Nov. 16). “Bursting the Facebook Bubble: We Asked Voters on the Left and Right to Swap Feeds.” The Guardian. Retrieved from theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/16/facebook-bias-bubble-us-election-conservative-liberal-news-feed. |
Mark Roquet (