Moving Beyond Basic Technology Use and Understanding the Importance of Digital Literacy

Being digitally literate can mean different things. For a long time, being digitally literate meant knowing how to use technology, computers, and the internet to get, assess, save, create, show, and share information, as well as communicate and work with others online. Being digitally literate today means also understanding and using the basic principles of digital technologies and tools to complete tasks and solve problems.

Being able to understand and make sense of the digital world, think critically, and apply first principles is key to succeeding in the constantly changing digital landscape.

It’s more about your mindset towards the digital world than your skills. After all, it’s easy to learn how to use Zoom, email, Monday or Word. If you’re unsure about something or having trouble, you can find the answer quickly on Google or YouTube, which is probably clearer and easier to follow than any explanation an instructor could give.

It’s like that quote that’s been going around: “AI will not replace you. A person using AI will.”

Image generated by the Midjourney bot. The prompt was: “Create an image that visually represents the concept of digital literacy, including elements such as a person using a computer, the internet, and symbols or icons representing critical thinking, information evaluation, and adaptation to new technology.”

But what is digital literacy?

In 2010, Hague and Payton distinguished eight components of digital literacy:

1. Creativity. This means being able to use digital technologies to create and share original content.
2. Critical Thinking and Evaluation. This involves being able to tell if digital information is trustworthy. Being a critical thinker in this context means being able to approach digital information with a critical mindset, and to use critical thinking skills to evaluate and make sense of that information.
3. Culture and Social Understanding. This entails understanding the cultural and social implications of digital technologies.
4. Collaboration. This means working with others using digital technologies.
5. Ability to Find and Select Information. This involves finding, evaluating and using information from various digital sources.
6. Effective Communication. This means communicating using digital technologies like email, instant messaging, and social media.
7. E-Safety. This means knowing about online dangers like viruses, hacking, and scams, and knowing how to protect yourself and your community from them.
8. Functional Skills. This means being able to do basic things on the computer, like creating documents and browsing the internet.

Each of these components can be expanded into multiple questions. My goal this year is to learn more about each of these components and figure out how to create a society of techno optimists, so that we can work with technology, not for it or against it — while improving my own digital literacy.

Maybe these eight components don’t make sense nowadays?

Maybe we need to rethink what and how we can learn to improve our digital literacy? After all, If you’re not digitally literate, you’re at a big disadvantage in today’s market. We need to learn to work with the technology that’s becoming a bigger part of our lives, as machines are expected to do more than humans by 2025¹. If you’re not digital savvy, you might miss out on one of the 58 million new jobs that will come from this “robot revolution.”

We all have a responsibility to search for more digital literacy, whether we work with technology as product managers, SWEs, designers, analysts, or others. We’re responsible for creating a future where humans can thrive with technology.

I’ve always believed that technology is here to help us. It’s up to us to learn more about it and use it to our advantage.

1 — https://www.weforum.org/press/2018/09/machines-will-do-more-tasks-than-humans-by-2025-but-robot-revolution-will-still-create-58-million-net-new-jobs-in-next-five-years/