DIGITAL CITIZEN

DIGITAL CITIZEN

A digital citizen is a person using information technology (IT) in order to engage in society, politics, and government. It refers to the responsible use of technology, computer, the internet, digital devices. Let us discuss the importance of being a digital citizen in this short write up.

Today in these pandemic times, many children use a computer, access the internet for school and other activities. Therefore, it becomes important to teach our children to protect their personal data, balance and control their data use, communicate kindly with others over social media. It is important to educate our children about the possible harm over the internet eg; cyberbullying, irresponsible social media usage, scams, viruses.

Some of the aspects that a child needs to be taught while using social media are:

  1. Good online behaviour: Through media platforms, one can communicate with known or unknown people who are distantly placed. During such an instance there is a possibility of communicating in a harsh manner which may not be done while in-person conversation. This is one of the reasons for cyberbullying.
  2. Privacy protection: Children should be taught to protect their private data such as where they live, school address, email passwords, parents information.
  3. Viruses: Children should also be taught to identify scams, malware, phishing, ransomware. They should be made aware not to click on an ad or link which they are not sure of.
  4. Media literacy: It is the ability to learn and understand online information and separate false information from truth.
  5. Balance screen time and offline activities: Studies have shown that excessive usage of technology can affect the minds of children. Therefore, from a very early age children should be taught how to balance screen time and offline time.
  6. Digital footprint: The pictures and information that we post online will be present forever. Most children think by deleting the post the information or picture will be deleted. However, it is very difficult to remove this information and leaves a digital footprint. These pictures and posts they create can create an online persona that is totally different from oneself.
  7. Respect copyright rules: Children should be taught the rules of copyright and how to find and properly cite original source of online content.

Check out this small video by google on being internet awesome

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