Digital Citizenship and Social Media Impacts
#CI3342
Social media and technology have become a big part of our lives and impacting Social media and technology have become a big part of our lives and is impacting everyone. It is important that we implement proper digital education for a positive impact digitally. There are different ways to introduce positive digital usage and one important way is to have digital citizenship. A video from Commonsense.org helps explain what digital citizenship is by defining it as, “… being safe with your information and who you connect with…it’s acting responsibly in how you communicate and behave…” This video does a great job explaining the definition of digital citizenship as well as making the information clear and engaging in a video format. The video also mentions how a big part of our lives is digital, so engaging in safe and responsible digital usage will make you a digital citizen with positive digital engagement.
In the journal article, Development of Youth Digital Citizenship Scale and Implication for Educational Setting, it mentions that “Now, digital citizenship education should become a new identity card for the citizens of digital era who are demonstrating their capabilities … relating to the use of technology through a reasonable approach…” (Kim, M., & Choi, D. (2018). This journal article explains how digital citizenship is very important now that everyone is involved in this digital world. The part of reasonable approach that the article mentions is key because with so much digital influence, there is more accessibility to misinformation and negative digital usage.
In my own words, I would describe digital citizenship as a way to have a positive impact digitally. It involves being aware that the content you post, and share has an impact. As a digital user, you have a responsibility with the way you use social media platforms. I never heard the term digital citizenship until taking this class, but it is critical to know and understand especially now since technology and social media platforms are constantly changing. Having a positive impact digitally, will not only help you with the connection of others but also how you develop professionally.
A similar topic related to digital citizenship is digital literacy. Digital literacy mostly focuses on how to use the digital devices, whereas digital citizenship is how you use and develop in social media platforms. The similarities between the two is that they go hand in hand, you can’t have good and positive digital citizenship if you don’t have digital literacy. A difference between the two that digital literacy focuses more on understanding how to use the digital devices and understanding its purpose, while digital citizenship focuses on the importance on your digital participation.
A way to foster good digital citizenship in adult learners would be to exhibit the negative impacts that as a result of negative digital citizenship. Negative digital citizenship plays an essential role on how job recruiters view you for specific job opportunity. More adult learners will be more intrigued to perform good digital citizenship when noticing that it can impact their chances of getting a job. In the article This is What Recruiters Look For On Your Social Media Accounts, Fernandez mentions how it is tricky when trying to balance professionalism with personality when using social media. (Fernandez 2018) It is very important what Fernandes mentions because it shows how when using social media, you should have a balance of professionalism and personality because it will affect how recruiters view you.
It is important to understand the social media platform that you are using because each social media platform offers different components that can be used differently. In the New York Times article, it mentions how, “Social media changes all the time, so it’s important to keep up with the evolution of the platforms and to keep looking for ways to optimize your use of the available the tools.” (Sreenivasan) Screenivasan makes a good point when talking about social media changes. The article provides an image that successfully represents different social media platforms and how many engage in it. This goes back to my point of needing digital literacy in order to have good digital citizenship. Social media platforms are constantly changing and with each platform there are different uses that will be beneficial when looking for jobs or beneficial for having digital citizenship. In order to have a positive impact digitally it is very important to know how to use different technology and different social media platforms so that you can use it positively. Overall, social media and technology is changing has been changing and will be changing, therefore it is necessary to implement proper digital citizenship to have positive effects on the world digitally.
References
Fernandez, C. (2018, February 7). This Is What Recruiters Look For On Your Social Media Accounts. https://www.fastcompany.com/40527752/this-is-what-recruiters-look-for-on-your-social-media-accounts.
Kim, M., & Choi, D. (2018). Development of Youth Digital Citizenship Scale and Implication for Educational Setting. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 21(1), 155–171. Retrieved November 24, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/26273877
Sreenivasan, S. How to Use Social Media in Your Career. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/guides/business/social-media-for-career-and-business.
What Is Digital Citizenship? Common Sense Education. (2020, August 5). https://www.commonsense.org/education/videos/what-is-digital-citizenship.