The Digital Edge. S. Craig Watkins
certain skills and a general facility with smart technologies. A move along the skills continuum includes the ability to use general computer software such as word processing, spreadsheet, and email applications. As one climbs the technical skills ladder the ability to master more complex software involving media creation, analytics, and coding emerges. These are all features of digital media literacy.
All of the students that we met at Freeway had developed many of the rudimentary skills that allowed them to use the Internet with little or no difficulties. For example, they could operate computers to conduct searches, create documents, download content, and send and receive emails. Literacy in general is not static and typically shifts in relation to technological and social transformations.11 In short, what it means to be literate in an ever-evolving and technology-driven society is constantly changing.
Digital literacy is not simply about “technical competency” but also about developing important social and critical thinking competencies. For example, a teen may be able to conduct a search to find information related to a task that she is trying to complete. But she must also execute a series of other more nuanced cognitive tasks. For instance, she must be able to critically evaluate search results and make discerning choices regarding the quality, relevance, and usefulness of the information accessed. We might call this mastering the skills of information literacy.12 Further, she must be able to take information from her search and engage in comparison and contrast, dissection, critique, and critical thinking. This is where critical thinking and analytical skills are prominent.
Transforming the information that she has evaluated into something tangible and in the form of an expressed artifact or representation—a graphic, game, report, or piece of code—is yet another dimension of digital literacy. These practices are related to design and production literacies. Schools devote most of their resources to teaching students technical skills with varying degrees of success. However, a more dynamic approach to digital literacy must also help students cultivate a questioning disposition that employs technology to practice innovation and problem solving.
Virtually all of the students that we met at Freeway were aware of and used a mix of platforms to search for information—Google, Wikipedia, and YouTube. However, the skills and the disposition to use that information in responsive and innovative ways were not nearly as prevalent. Skills related to tool literacy and basic computing like searching and downloading represent lower-order thinking skills, or skills that are not cognitively demanding. Skills related to evaluation, critique, design, and creation represent higher-order thinking skills, or skills that are more likely to demonstrate cognitive rigor and nuance. Whereas lower-order skills are fundamental to participating in a digital and knowledge-driven economy, higher-order skills are essential to thriving. If the students in our study are any indication, schools do relatively well at developing lower-order skills but struggle to cultivate higher-order skills.
Finally, schools must also develop curricula that empower students to practice greater data literacy. The revelations in 2016 that social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter had been used in the presidential election to deliberately spread false information or what has become known as “fake news” through online social networks provokes a discussion about what role schools can play in building a more informed citizenry. The Facebook scandal involving the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica further exposed the dangers of the connected world. Developments like these highlight the urgent need for schools to assume a greater role in helping young people understand the economics and politics of the Internet. Regarding the former, young people must cultivate a better understanding of how virtually everything they do online from posting pictures, to liking a video, to searching for a product is data that can be used to profile them and monetize their digital identities and practices. Regarding the latter, young people must cultivate a better understanding of how their online activities can expose them to political communication that is deliberately misleading and undermines the core principles of democracy. Whereas the former—the economics of the Internet—raise concerns about the monetization of data the latter—the politics of the Internet—raise concerns about the weaponization of data. Consequently, schools should not only be teaching students how to search, design, or code. Schools should also be teaching students how to think critically about how the algorithms built by coders shape our digital media practices specifically and our lives more generally.
Issues like these expand how schools and society should be thinking about what it means to be literate and high functioning in the digital world. Tool literacy involves learning how to use computers and software. Information literacy includes learning how to manage and navigate the flurry of information available in a connected world. Design literacy highlights the need to be able to make tech tools and information actionable. Critical literacy points to the need to comprehend the functions and implications of a rapidly evolving digital economy and society. And data literacy includes the preparation of citizens who better understand the data-driven policies of tech companies and how they affect society. These components are distinct and mark an increasingly complex spectrum of digital literacies.
The Changing Landscape of Internet Access
Among the students in our in-depth study, access to the Internet ranged from the conventional to the nonconventional. A small fraction of the families were technology rich and maintained reliable access to broadband. For example, in Jasmine’s lower-middle-class African American household, she and other family members—mother, father, and younger brother—each owned an Internet-enabled mobile device. There were several computers in the household. In addition to her laptop, Jasmine owned a smartphone and went online regularly from home. Jack, one of the few white students in our sample, also lived in a tech-rich environment. Compared with the majority of students in our in-depth case studies, Jack lived in an affluent household. Jack’s mother and father worked in professional occupations. Although his parents were divorced they provided him with abundant technology. Jack was the only student who owned an iPad in our sample. He used the tablet to play games, though he did download a couple of textbooks for school. He also owned a smartphone and used it frequently at school to Facebook with friends, play games, and go online.
Many of the families in our study resided on the opposite end of the technology ownership and broadband access spectrum. Take Kyle and his family, for instance. They were poor and constantly on the move. During our year in Freeway the family was hit hard by a devastating fire, which made their meager financial circumstances especially dire. When we met Kyle, his family had resettled in a multigenerational household where he shared a sofa bed with his thirty-two-year-old uncle. There was only one computer in the household, and it was an outdated PC. The phone that Kyle owned was limited to texting. In this familial environment, broadband Internet was a luxury that simply could not be considered. Kyle’s home environment was similar to that of a number of students in our study, in that it did not afford the opportunity to cultivate the online social and digital capital that fuel deeper and more diverse forms of engagement in digital media and participatory cultures.
Amina faced similar challenges. She and her mother moved frequently. Amina grew up in Rochester, New York, and moved to Austin in her junior year. She spent her sophomore year in Ethiopia living with an aunt. Her family is ethnically Ethiopian and Amina spoke Amharic. During our yearlong fieldwork at Freeway, a conflict with her mother forced Amina to move in with a friend’s family for a brief period of time. Her mother went back to school, determined to shore up her postsecondary credentials and opportunities for more meaningful employment. As a result, Amina became a breadwinner as income from her job as a restaurant worker helped support basic household expenses. From time to time she also had to provide childcare for her two-year-old sibling. Through all of this Amina took AP courses and maintained aspirations for college.
By the end of the school year she moved into an apartment with a female acquaintance, starting her transition to young adulthood much earlier than most people her age (eighteen). They both worked in low-wage service occupations, and the struggle to make rent, utilities, and other necessary expenses made broadband Internet a luxury. In cases like Amina’s, a mobile data plan was the most reliable form of Internet access. But as we discuss below and in chapter two, mobile-only