digital citizenship guide: unlocking
Digital wellbeing
For Year 7 Students
Responsible behaviour
Digital detox
Positive online engagement
Digital Literacy
Your digital brain
References
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The value of digital citizenship
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Digital citizenship is a valuable topic as it promotes safe behaviour online and educates us to use technology responsibly and respectfully (Wang et al., 2023). As technology continues to expand, it is important for you to be confident, smart and thoughtful when you interact online.
What is the purpose of this guide?
This guide is specifically aimed at Year 8 students and focuses on Digital Wellbeing which is one of the nine elements of Digital Citizenship (Ribble, 2015).
How will it help me?
It aims to increase your digital skills through a balanced approach to your device usage. Most importantly, this guide will teach you how to manage your digital wellbeing so you can interact online in a positive, comfortable way, ensuring that you are confident and resilient when engaging online.
Digital Wellbeing
What actually is digital wellbeing?
Prioritising mental well-being when engaging in online environments is important to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Digital wellbeing involves managing your online habits, behaviours, and interactions in a way that promotes good mental health, and productivity.
What is the difference between digital wellbeing and digital wellness?
Digital wellness can be defined as the prime condition of health and wellbeing specifically relating to digital use activities (Blankson & Hersher, 2021). Let’s consider some routines that may help develop positive online engagement and help you participate in a healthy way when sharing online. You can avoid negative behaviour through knowing your boundaries, practising self-awareness, limiting distractions, setting goals and staying informed. Let’s break this down further.
Images by Diego Solas Sketchify Korea
via canva.com
Images by Diego Solas Sketchify Korea via canva.com
To achieve digital wellbeing, we must be able to understand what respectful online behaviour looks like. Personal responsibility, active participation, and a commitment to fairness and justice are essential components of digital citizenship (Krutka & Carpenter, 2017).
But what does this really mean? Here are a few examples:
- Knowing how to act if you witness harmful behaviour.
- Be aware of what to do if you are being cyber-bullied or know someone else who is.
- Understand when is it acceptable to share a photo of someone online.
- Be able to recognise if you are forming poor habits .
Through the various sections on this website you will be prompted to reflect and actively engage in real-world online experiences. Through self-reflection on your digital usage, you will be asked to consider how to manage your digital wellbeing effectively.
Real examples
Three goals for digital wellbeing include:
- Prioritise your safety at all times.
- Choose to exercise control and use devices with moderation.
- Always act ethically when you are online.
(Ribble & Park, 2019).
These goals will drive you to make connections between your own values when participating online. Through improving your digital wellbeing you can gain more control, independence, and freedom within when using your favourite platforms and apps.
Images by Diego Solas Sketchify Korea via canva.com