Digital Literacy: A Guide For Today's Filipino Parents

The internet is a vast place, and knowing how to navigate all this information can be overwhelming at times. It’s one thing to manage your own internet content consumption; it’s another to supervise and monitor your kids.

So what’s a smart parent to do? Enter digital literacy. Mastering digital literacy means knowing how to use the internet to your advantage.

In this article, we’ll go through the basics of digital literacy and how you can navigate the digital world both as a user and as a parent. Ready? Let’s begin!

What Does Digital Literacy Mean?

Digital literacy includes everything from researching and writing (yes, even Instagram captions and Facebook comments) to recording and creating—basically anything one might use for school, work, or in daily life.

It’s about knowing how to wield the internet as a tool, from finding reliable online resources for your kids’ homework and research papers to spotting fake news and finding trustworthy information, and even down to trivial things like locating the best coffee spots near your area.

On a deeper level, digital literacy means knowing the right questions to ask about the information we find online. It involves asking ethical questions about the issues we are exposed to online and understanding the moral implications of what we post on the internet.

It also includes making the right choices and forming informed opinions based on what we find online. This involves maintaining proper decorum online (i.e., not being a cyberbully or internet troll), avoiding careless comments on strangers’ posts, and refraining from posting uninformed opinions as tweets.

Digital literacy is all about constantly asking how we can use the internet as a positive force in our lives and our communities.

Essentially, digital literacy is about responsibly sharing your thoughts with the world, whether it’s in the form of an informative YouTube video, a funny Instagram reel, or making plans and collaborating on the annual family reunion in the group chat.

It’s about knowing how to search, navigate, and locate information in the right digital environments. After finding your information, it’s about evaluating and analyzing it. Next, it’s about applying your critical thinking skills to reassess if the information you found is indeed relevant to you.

Then, it’s about organizing and storing this information in a way that makes it easier to use.

Lastly, it involves knowing how to create digital artifacts such as blog posts, PowerPoint presentations, online publication materials, and more.

It’s also about choosing the best and most trusted platforms for your information and news sources and deciding which social media sites deserve your online presence. Sometimes, it also includes managing your online files (your exploding email inbox says hi).

Digital literacy is about finding our place in the online world and learning how to navigate it. It’s about having the knowledge and capability to use the internet as a tool in our lives and maximizing it in a way that benefits us both online and offline.

Lastly, it’s about knowing how to use different types of existing technology and always being open to new changes.

Importance of Digital Literacy

Some parents who didn’t grow up with extensive exposure to the digital world might choose not to involve themselves too much in it. But our kids have no escape. Gadgets are essential for school and their social lives, and they have 24/7 access to different forms of technology.

There are countless, easily accessible websites on the internet available to your child, and not all of them are safe. If you can access potentially harmful sites, so can your child.

With digital literacy and proper guidance on how to use the internet safely, they are protected from exposure to harmful content and malicious interactions online.

Young people today live in a digital-centric world. As responsible parents and guardians, we must be equipped with digital literacy to supervise their internet usage and help them navigate their digital environments, ensuring they lead happy, healthy lives both online and offline.

Digital Citizenship

Teaching your kids how to participate in the online world safely, effectively, critically, and responsibly is what digital citizenship is all about.

Digital citizenship goes beyond having the skills and knowledge to use the internet to their advantage; it includes having the right values and attitudes that contribute to their digital well-being and uphold their rights online.

Good digital citizens are people who can use digital tools to create and consume internet content while maintaining a wholesome online presence and being responsible online. It’s essentially the conscientious use of technology by individuals who interact with society through computers, the internet, and other gadgets.

Good digital citizenship ensures that every child has access to a safe digital environment and contributes to a democratic culture both online and offline.

Screen Time

You’re probably already familiar with this term. Screen time refers to the total time your kid spends watching TV, playing online or video games, scrolling on social media, or basically any time they spend in front of a screen.

There are different recommended screen times for various age groups, and screen time typically increases as the child gets older and learns more about using their devices wisely.

When counting total screen time, most parents only consider time spent on devices leisurely, since today’s educational system heavily relies on technology and incorporates digital learning.

And although the term "screen time" often oversimplifies how devices are used and can carry a negative connotation, it isn’t entirely harmful.

For instance, quality TV programs and learn-to-read apps can provide an early route to language development and literacy for younger kids, while strategic video games have long been proven to enhance critical thinking and quick decision-making for older kids.

When used wisely, screen time can have positive effects on kids. The time spent in front of a screen is just as important as how that time is spent.

Digital Footprint

The term digital footprint means exactly what it sounds like: a trail, or footprint, of data history that you leave behind every time you use the internet.

Remember: Anything posted on the internet stays on the internet forever.

It can include everything from the websites you visit (yes, even those you visited using an incognito tab), the social media accounts under your name and everything you post there, all your email accounts including the emails you send, and down to the devices you own.

Remember, anything posted on the internet stays on the internet forever, so all of that contributes to your digital footprint. If the entirety of your digital footprint shows a positive online presence, it can be beneficial to your personal branding!

You might wonder what the purpose of a digital footprint is, and the short answer is money.

Your digital footprint helps apps and websites learn more about you and what keeps you (and people like you) using their app. This data helps them provide more tailored services, reach more users, and in effect, attract more advertisers and investors.

Aside from apps, other organizations such as future employers and admissions teams of educational programs you apply to can also use your digital footprint to learn more about you, so make sure you leave a positive digital footprint.

You can do this by:

1. Practicing thinking before posting.

2. Managing your privacy settings to control who sees what you share.

3. Limiting cookies on the websites you visit.

4. Searching for your name from time to time to see what your digital footprint looks like from another person’s perspective.

Fact-Checking

We keep talking about how information online should be used wisely to maintain a positive digital experience, but HOW do we actually sort through all this information and discern fact from fiction? We fact-check.

Fact-checking is verifying claims made by others and evaluating their sources. When fact-checking information on the internet, remember to check multiple sources and ask yourself these questions:

1. Who is behind the person or organization that provided this information?

2. Where is the evidence for their claim?

3. What do others say about the organization and their particular claim?

These questions help us identify the motives of our sources in sharing particular information and verify if their evidence comes from reliable sources and is backed up by other strong evidence. It will also help us determine if their claim is supported by what others who have authority on the topic say.

Digital Learning

This concept is familiar to all of us. It hasn’t been long since COVID-19 took over the world and thrust our unprepared educational system into fully online learning.

Our kids have since returned to face-to-face learning, but the benefits we discovered in digital learning have persisted in most educational programs, with some having no plans to return to fully offline learning.

Even before online classes became prevalent, digital learning had been around for a long time. It’s what students have used to answer homework questions, complete school projects, and write research papers.

Digital learning is about educators incorporating technology into their curriculum to facilitate learning and teaching students how to use digital tools to further their knowledge and skills.

Digital learning offers a wider range of tools, resources, and techniques for kids to learn new things in their own way than traditional learning ever did.

Digital learning has transformed the educational system by delivering lessons more efficiently, encouraging collaboration, making school and learning in general cheaper and more accessible to more children, and most importantly, finding new ways to make learning more personalized and enjoyable by providing a more dynamic experience.

Digital learning includes all forms of learning that make use of technology, including everything from YouTube tutorials on how to start crocheting to online short courses, webinars, and even Instagram reels on the latest cellphone technology.

Final Thoughts

And that’s it for digital literacy! We know this was a lot to take in, but we live in a digital-centric world, and as parents, it is our responsibility to guide our children on how to navigate it and use it wisely.

We covered a lot in this article, but in the end, digital literacy is all about constantly asking how we can use the internet as a positive force in our lives and our communities and moving forward from there.

Read why Filipinos desperately need a guide to raising kids in a digital world here.