Digital literacy is immensely important to people living in today’s world.

It is the ability to
participate in a digital world effectively due to increased knowledge and skill of how to use technology
for communication. The focus of digital literacy used to be on simply using technology effectively. As our
world has become more technologically literate, the focus of digital literacy has become broader over
time to include social media. It is an ever-changing term that evolves as technology evolves. Overall,
digital literacy is an essential life skill for 21st century learners.

With the idea of digital literacy, some are worried that social capital is being lost. Social capital is
the resources that you can access from your social circle, both on and offline. In my opinion, digital
literacy and the use of new digital communication is the gateway to increasing social capital both
directly and indirectly. People who are digitally literate typically feel as if they have more overall support
from their social circle because of the ease of communication and collaboration with technology. Digital
literacy encourages both the bonding and bridging of social capital.

Unfortunately in this day and age, fake news is a huge issue to digital literacy. You can’t assume
that everything is real on social media although social media is considered to be a “real” news source. As
teachers, we need to teach our students to protect themselves from this problem. One way that we can
help ensure that our students are safe is by teaching them to be metaliterate. Metaliteracy is the ability
to make sense of the immense amount of information online and is different than digital literacy
because it is not just the effective use of technology, but how we think and process information that we
see. We need to teach higher evaluative standards in schools, showing our students how to ask critical
questions and closely read sources.

It is undoubtedly important that we take digital literacy more seriously as educators. We need
to rethink our practices and understand that it is everyone’s job to teach digital literacy, not just library
media specialists. We need to squash the idea that our students are “digital natives” because although
they are growing up in a digital age, they still need to be taught to use technology effectively, have the
ability to evaluate information online, and contribute to this media safely. We can’t protect our students
from everything, but we can offer them safe spaces to become good digital citizens.