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The significance of digital divide and digital equlity

When you see the terms “digital divide” and “digital equality”, you might have some basic concepts about these two terms by splitting words. “Digital”+ “divide”, you might think about the difference of people’s access to technology. According to the article “The SAGE Encyclopedia of Educational Technology-Digital Divide”, from Dr. Pazurek and Solen, the term was initially used to describe the gap of various people having different levels and opportunities to access technology and internet (Pazurek & Feyissa, 2015). “Digital”+ “equality”, you might think about the same and equal opportunities to use technology. According to ICF, digital equality describes that everyone has the equal opportunity to use technology and acquire technology skills in their life. No matter what cultural background you come from, how is your socioeconomic status, or what is your race, you all have the same access to the internet ( Ankit Rajput, 2021). 

Digital divide and digital equality are closely related. If we have the problem of digital divide, which means we also cannot achieve the goal of digital equality. Vise versa, if we achieve the goal of digital equality, we also do not have the social problem of digital divide in our life. In today’s society, technology cannot be more important than it used to be. According to Scientific American, one of the most important factors that determine one’s position in society is their access to technology. I personally agree with this opinion. Indeed, as the internet and social media largely applied in many aspects of our daily life. The ability of using social media has become an important factor influencing our income, our job opportunities, the way we receive and pay money, and our ways of accessing news and other information. 

Think about a decade ago, the way that people look for a new job, usually through friends recommendation, or looking for employment information in the newspaper. The way has been dramatically changed. Nowadays, nearly all young people looking for jobs on social media, such as Handshake, Linkedin. There are many great platforms that allow employees to find jobs, and employers employ employees. Take my own experience as an example, I have a part time job operating a social media application for an education institution. I found the job on social media I already work for almost 2 years. But the interesting thing is I never meet my head person before, I even don’t know what she looks like. The reason is we only work online together. She is living in Beijing. I am living in Minnesota. We only communicate online. That is a very good experience about working through social media, and proves the convenience and opportunities that technology brings me. I can work online, which save money and time. However, if I do not have access of internet, can I still find this job? Definity no. Even I find the job, if I don’t know how to use social media, can I work online? The answer is no. 

Therefore, access to the internet can bring a lot to people. With the skills of using technology, we have more opportunities and choices in our life! 

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About digital citizenship

With the wide application of social media and technology, the importance of building up a healthy virtual world is more noticeable. In this blog, I will refer to a term called “digital citizenship”. According to Ribble, Bailey, and Ross (2004),    Digital citizenship is the continuously developing norms of appropriate, responsible, and empowered technology use. From my understanding, technology users like the citizen of the virtual world. Like in the actual world, everyone has the responsibility to build up a safe and healthy environment for the society. Digital citizenship also takes the responsibility to establish a healthy atmosphere for the virtual world. 

As Xu, Yang, MacLeod, and Zhu (2018) discussed in their article “ Infusing Digital Citizenship into Higher Education”，they provided a most simple definition for the term Digital citizenship: “digital citizenship is responsible technology use.” Then, if you read my last blog, you might wonder what is the difference between digital literacy and digital citizenship. Digital literacy refers to the skills and the abilities that you use social media, but digital citizenship refers to the way that technology users use the internet responsibly and appropriately (June, 2018). So what can we do to acquire digital citizenship? As I mentioned in the beginning, technologies are widely used nowadays, and the age of internet users is becoming younger in average age. The education of digital citizenship is also spreading in the K-12 education system, which is a part of common sense education. The education of digital citizenship in the classroom for both adult learners and young learners, including but not limited to the following aspects of learning: protecting private information, respecting copyright, knowing what should do in front of cyberbullying and other aspects of digital use (Brooke, 2019). In my own opinion, learning how to adress cyberbullyig is the most important part of digital citizenship learning, because as parents or teachers, we cannot control what infomation the kids receive in their own social media account. How to process and filter some unhealthy infomation and how to seek for help when cyberbullying happen on you, are the most two essential cores to prevent children get psychological injuries in social media. 

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Participation cultural theory: a new way people engage sociaty.

While reading the word “participation cultural theory” in the title, you might wonder what is participation cultural theory is. Here is my own definition: It is a culture that allows various people to use different ways to engage society by using the internet. They can create information, build relationships, sharing information, and cooperate with others. From my understanding, the main group of people that largely cultural participated in civic engagement is the young generation. With the technology develops, young generations tend to have a higher acceptance rate than young people about participating virtual world. They also have better skills to create and sharing information online.

I want to mention a term that was mentioned in Henry Jenkins’s TED Talk, that is Communication Shift. I agree with what he said there is a shift in people’s communication way. Indeed, we are changing our ways of communication, from paper to audio, from audio to hand typing digital messages, from messages to videos. Now we have many ways to communicate. The ways that we use to communicate are also being more and more effective and dynamic. Like the blog I am writing, I am not clear about who will be my audience except my classmates and instructor. Anyone in the world, from different cultural backgrounds, might read the information that I want to share in my blog here. To some extent, I am also communicating with my audience. I am passing information to my audience.   

What’s more, Covid-19 also accelerates more people to use online communication. Do elementary students use Zoom to have full-time classes before? The answer is obvious, NO. They went to school before every day and have physical classes. But due to the public health concern, they are using Zoom to have classes now. Because they are using computers for everyday classes, they are now familiar with computer skills! It is a great example of communication shifts for young people. Combining my own experience about communication for older people, I can talk about my grandma. My grandmother never uses online resources because she doesn’t know how to use these resources. She even doesn’t have her own phones. In the past, I visited her by going to the places she living. But since the COVID-19, long traveling is not encouraged and safe. Now, I visited her and communicated with her by using facetime on my aunt’s phone. Then my grandma also starts to communicate online with me. She can hear my voice and see my face on the phone. 

However, different people from different backgrounds still have differences in their access to online resources. Have you heard about the term “Participation Gap” before? I heard about it from Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (Jenkins, Puroshotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robison, 2009). According to the article, the participation gap refers to the unequal opportunities that young people gain to understand knowledge and skills about the world. This idea leaves me a deep impression because I personally strongly agree that people’s digital literacy and skills different according to their different levels of opportunities access to the internet. For example, the young generation from less developed countries might show as less familiar with internet use than the young generation from developed countries. 

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Reflection blog#1

As technology developing, social media is becoming an essential role in our life. Nearly everything we see or use in our daily life can be related to social media. For example, if we want to order food in a restaurant, we can order it in Doordash, or other applications. Or if we want to give money to a friend but we are not staying together, we can use Venmo or Paypal rather than give them cash face to face. Yes, Social media is changing the way we live and the way society work. 

After I read the research findings from Common Sense Media and the Pew Research Center, one of the facts that come to my mind is there is an increasing number of people, including teenagers and adults, using social media nowadays. Another fact is younger rely more on social media than older. The number of teens who own a smartphone has increase from 41% in 2012 to 89% in 2018 (Common Sense Media, 2018). Most social media users also use social media multiple times a day. For some of them, social media make them distract from works or study. Users also feel using social media makes them feel not lonely and boring. Social media create a way for them to contact family, friends, and co-workers during the day. According to research, about 40% of all social media users think it is very hard to give up social media (Smith & Anderson, 2018). It is understandable because social media has become an integrated part of most people’s lives. 

95% of teenagers have the opportunity to access social media (Common Sense Media, 2018). It is acknowledged that social media did post a positive impact on teenagers. For example, one teenager mentions that social media makes them feel not lonely and not depressed because they always have friends to talk to on phones (Common Sense Media, 2018). They get more opportunities to talk to peers on social media. What’s more, social media also provides a platform to teenagers to share their stories and experience. Teens can track peer’s life on social media even though they are not staying together. 

However, we cannot ignore the negative effects brought by social media use on teenagers. One of the biggest impacts is teenagers sometimes be distracted from important work because they get social media notifications on mobile devices, such as email, messages, or a phone call from friends. According to research from Common Sense Media, about 57% of teenagers agree that social media distract them when they are studying or working. Social media also could be a way to spread unhealthy and incorrect social values and information to teenagers. Sometimes there could be some hate and unfriendly speech that was commented on under a teen’s post. This bullying information and rude language may make teens depressed and being unconfident. 

One figure that surprises me from the research is teens think that social media brings more positive impact to them, compared to the negative impacts (Common Sense Media, 2018). By using social media, they feel less anxious, less depressed, less lonely, more confident. I think it is great that most teenagers have positive experiences of using social media. I am happy to see that. 

Lastly, I want to say, as one of the crazy fans of social media. I do agree that social media always distract me from the important stuff, such as work and study (I spend three hours writing this reflection blog... Because I often on my phone...). At the same time social media bring convenience to us, it is also distracting our life. I think it is important for teenagers to notice the importance of concentrating on things that they need to do, and the importance to put down their mobile, enjoy life surrounding them.