What is Digital Citizenship?

So what is digital citizenship? Let’s unpack it, digital is involving or relating to the use of computer technology and citizenship is a participatory member of a political community that is gained by meeting the legal requirements of a national, state, or local government. I believe to become or have digital citizenship is quite possibly the easiest citizenship to gain. Digital Citizenship is defined as“The continuously developing norms of appropriate, responsible, and empowered technology use.” Another way Digital Citizenship is defined is “to think critically, behave safely, and participate responsibly in our digital world” (Common Sense Media website, 2021). To me, digital citizenship is simply a person using information technology in order to engage online. I see it as a person with the skills and knowledge to effectively use digital technologies to participate in society, communicate with others and create and consume digital content.

The concepts of digital literacy and digital citizenship have many similarities as to how they interlock, but they are different terms. Digital literacy can be defined as going beyond the ability to simply know how to use technology, it requires being able to use that technology to find, evaluate, create, and communicate effectively. To me, in order to have digital citizenship, you must be digitally literate. Like I defined earlier digital citizenship a person with the skills and knowledge to effectively use digital technologies to participate in society, communicate with others, and create and consume digital content, and in order to these things to their max potential, you must be digitally literate.

I came across this interesting reading in my research that explained that there are different levels of being digitally literate. These levels include

1 A digital muggle, requiring no skills;

2 A digital citizen, who uses technology to communicate, find information, and transact;

3 A digital worker, who configures (such as website design or publication design) and uses digital systems; and

4 A digital maker, who builds and creates digital technology (for example JavaScript, HTML, Python, and other programming tools) Foundation for Young Australians.

To me, this makes everything a lot more clear. It makes sense that someone just is or isn’t digitally literate but that there are different levels of digital literacy.

Lastly, I believe that digital citizenship can be supported or fostered for adult learners like myself in various ways. Personally, the term digital citizenship is new to me so I can learn more and support it by doing my own research to fully understand it. It can and should be taught more often in an educational setting like college courses. As mentioned in the article by Xu, Yang, MacLeod, & Zhu, 2018 the most longstanding conceptualization of digital citizenship has been defined as, ‘the norms of behavior with regard to technology use’ (Ribbleet al., 2004: 7) So I feel as though these norms and behavior should be taught or shared to adult learners as they continue to change and develop over time.