In our world today one of the greatest assets to have is to have a fluency in digital literacy. As the world gets more and more digital it is very important to be able to differentiate what we are constantly looking at. We are bombarded with information at every step of our day and we can very quickly get deceived if we are not careful. it is digital literacy that allows us to confidently be online without fear of begin deceived and tricked by what we see online.
There is no way to get fake news and manipulation off the internet so it is important that instead we arm ourselves with the knowledge of how to fight it off. That is what digital literacy is, it is the set of skills that allow us to differentiate what we see online as truth or as lies. The lies are often not there for fun, but are there to purposely deceive us and trick us and more than not we are successfully fooled. According to an article by datasociety Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online there are many high influence groups of people that are using our societies lack of digital literacy against us. This includes politicians, news sources, online influencers, and many more. These groups use our own beliefs or opinions to effectively get us to believe whatever they want. In the article It’s Easier To Call A Fact A Fact by NPR it delves into the issue of us using our own bias to pick and choose what we believe online. It is as simple as, if we want to believe it we will. And now since we are now a very digital world it is part of our job as future educators to make sure we teach our students about digital literacy.
For me I will (hopefully) become a high school teacher and will be teaching students at an age where the internet is becoming huge parts of them and their personalities, as it did for me and others around that age. It is extremely important then to make sure they know the safe way to be online. The falsities that they will be exposed to online can range from an influencer telling them to by a product, to political posts that aim to shape their values for them, or even to online challenges that can have serious consequences. As someone who was just recently in high school I saw how harmful misinformation online can be to a developing mind and I see how important it is for us future educators to teach these kids how to not fall into traps. The way we go about teaching digital literacy is also very important since kids, especially, high school kids often ignore or neglect what we are trying to teach them. The EdCan website has put out a How do we teach students to identify fake news? factsheet that helps teachers find ways to teach this while being engaging. Kids won’t listen to the same thing over and over again so it is up to us to find new ways to connect to them and get them to listen. Hopefully they will be beginning to get taught at a younger age so there is less harm to kids on the internet.