Transcripts
1. Introduction: Our technology is incredibly powerful and it is essential, but at the same time it's altering the human condition. We need to have something that's going to say, you know what? Let's be more thoughtful about that. I'm David Ryan Polgar. I'm a tech ethicists and digital citizenship expert. I write, speak and consult about how technology impacts us from an ethical, legal, and emotional perspective. In today's class, we're going to learn all about digital citizenship and what you need to know to thrive online. Digital citizenship is the safe, savvy and ethical use of social media and technology. It's oftentimes described as the norms of behavior when we're interacting online. Really what excites me is that digital citizenship is a very broad-based topic that no matter where you are in your career, it applies to you. Are you online? You need to be a digital citizen. Are you touching your device hundreds of times a day, like everybody else around you? Then you need to be a digital citizen. With this class on digital citizenship, we are going to be looking holistically about everything you need to know in order to be a thriving individual in digital citizen online, we're going to be looking into areas like digital wellness, media literacy, privacy, and your digital responsibilities and laws that impact to you. You're going to go from a mindless consumer to actually thinking about your interactions more, thinking about how it's impacting other people, and to become more educated, empowered, and engaged.
2. What Is Digital Citizenship?: Digital citizenship is the safe, savvy and ethical use of social media and technology. It's often at times described as the norms of behavior when/or interacting online. Digital citizenship is important because you're impacting other people every time you're online. This is confusing because a lot of times we are alone when we're with our devices. We're thinking that it's just us and a blue screen. However, every time we send an email, every time we send a tweet, every time we're interacting online, we're affecting other people, we're affecting how they think of us. This the major part about digital citizenship. It's about being more proactive and about being more deliberate and intentional with our use of any device in any time we're interacting online. It behooves us no matter. If you're two or 92, to get involved in this area and not just be a passive consumer, but to be a digital citizen. By investing your time in digital citizenship, you're going to have a paradigm shift about how you think about technology. This is important because you're interacting online all the time. If you change your framework about how you communicate. That can have a dramatic impact in a positive manner on your productivity, how other people see you and how you think about yourself. Digital citizenship is really about gaining control and being more deliberate about your use. Go to any restaurant and look around you're going to see people with their faces buried in their phones not talking to one another. I'm sure that wasn't our intention. They booked a reservation at a fine restaurant and they're hoping to connect, but they're not connecting. Why is that? That's because if left to our own devices will always be on them, we're not going to naturally by default be intentional, it's up to us. It behooves us to be digital systems and be educated with this. There's a lot of unintended consequences with social media and technology and with how technology has been developed over the years. That's why this is a major issue right now, we're realizing that these unintended consequences need a solution. Digital citizenship is one of those solutions. It's about us not just being passive consumers, but actually being digital citizens. By being more thoughtful about how we interact online. With this class on digital citizenship, we're going to be looking holistically about everything you need to know to thrive online. We're going to be looking at: digital rights and responsibility, communication and etiquette, privacy and security, in addition, we have media literacy and digital literacy. Lastly, we have this idea of digital wellness, about being balanced with our technology. Digital citizenship is an exciting concept, because it really future proves us. It's a paradigm shift about how we're thinking about technology. By going from mindless to being deliberate with this. This is incredibly important because no matter what technology occurs tomorrow or 10 years from now. We're changing our framework. We're being more thoughtful about it. Now that we have an overview of what we're talking about, with digital citizenship. It's time to jump right in. Next, we're going to be talking about digital health and wellness.
3. Digital Health & Wellness: The area of Digital Health and Wellness is a huge topic right now and for good reason. I've been involved in digital wellness since about 2012 and what happened on my end was I was going to jury duty and I forgot my phone that day. What occurred was, even though I didn't have a phone in my pocket, I felt a vibration. I felt a ring in order to reach inside my pocket and pull out nothing because there was no phone. That really bothered me as I was sitting there for hours without my phone yet I still had this vibration. Afterwards, when I was back home, like any 21st century individual would do, I googled my symptoms and what came up was a Pew Research study that found that 67 percent , two- thirds of Americans have experienced what we call Phantom Rings or Phantom sensations. This is the same idea that would happen if an individual lost her limb, that they still feel that there is a limb there. That really got under my skin. This idea that our technology was impacting us so much, that it was as important as a lost limb, that it was altering my perception over what was even occurring. That's really what altered my trajectory, my career trajectory to say, this is important. Our technology is incredibly powerful and it has some great parts to connect the world and is essential. But at the same time it's altering the human condition of how we live, love, learn, and even die. This is why it's so important to push it in a direction that we want that is better lined with humanity. A major aspect of achieving Digital Wellness is this idea of control. Is technology controlling you or are you controlling technology? Are really the master of your device? Or do you feel beholden to it? We need to have that paradigm shift where we're using technology to benefit our life, not to be glued to it in a way that is detracting us from what we want to do. Just by walking around and looking at other people and maybe even examining your own behavior. It's pretty clear that we're all glued to our smartphones. What we need to start thinking about is what is the impact of that? One study recently showed that the average person touches their iPhone 2600 times a day. Other ones have shown hundreds of times that we are opening up our phones, and while that doesn't have to be negative, what we want to have is our smartphone and our devices add to our life, increase our productivity, increase our creativity. That's a tool that can only happen if we have power over our devices. One of the things that we're realizing is that when we are struggling with our use of technology, or specifically with our use of a smartphone, it's not just us against our smartphone. It's hundreds of people who had designed that product to make it sticky, if you will. This gets into the idea of a slot machine type of design. This comes from the concept of invariable reward. This idea that we are randomly given these bursts of dopamine. This is usually done in the form of a notification. When you receive a notification on your phone, this is something that causes your brain to perk up and to say, what soundness, and I need to check this. A major part of Digital Wellness is by having greater control and maybe changing some of our notifications or using tools that would reduce the level of notifications to make that less attractive and for us to gain control over our phones. This can be a popular one, is to change the color by going to gray scale that can make the bless colors less attraction to your phone. This is also something where you can use tools that would reduce the amount of notifications that you're going to have. In addition, major Tech companies now are getting involved in this space of Digital Wellness, and they're giving users greater control over how their smartphone is interacting with them. When we're dealing with this concept, we need to think that as a knowledge worker, it's not about the time that you have. We're no longer factory workers that are producing a certain amount of widgets per a certain amount of hours. Our time is not as important, what's important is the output. How creative are we? Are we thinking critically? The reason why Digital Health and Wellness is crucial with this topic is because our tech use effects our thinking. It affects our overall well-being. What we need to talk about is how can we feel more balanced? How can we get to those deeper spots to allow our brain to wander and wonder? You're not going to achieve digital wellness by default. If you always have your phone around you, chances are you are going to be checking it. But if you're a knowledge worker, you want to really have those moments of deep work, of critical thinking of creativity, is so essential. What that means is that we need to alter our environment to make a condition where this is more feasible. An easy way to do this is to leave your phone at home. If this is not a time where you need to necessarily contact somebody back, and this is a time where you went to actually allow for that deeper work. Distraction blocking tools are another area that can really help us out if we're struggling with too many distractions that are getting us off task. These are tools that would just increase our focus by limiting those distractions. For example, this area started out with writers a few years ago that were saying, I need hours in a row without getting notifications from social media platforms saying that somebody just sent me a message or there's a new photo than I need to check out. Now it's expanded to all different professions of people that are saying, I need a few hours straight of this deep work. One of the biggest tips that we have when we're dealing with the idea of Digital Wellness is really just the mere awareness about how we're interacting online. The way I recommend doing this is to actually assess where you're at to actually spend one week and keep track of how you're interacting. How much time are you spending? Where are you spending your time? Also on the positive side, where you having your best ideas. Where are you achieving your flow or your moments of deep work? What's great about this area of digital wellness? Is it's extremely actionable? You'll see results right away. What I recommend you do is to actually come out with a plan to say, how can you get more balanced? Because again, you have real things that you're trying to achieve. You're trying to think great thoughts or create something new and outrageous. But this is only going to happen if you alter your environment to an area that is ideal for this type of cultivation. Next up, we're going to move on to discussing privacy.
4. Privacy & Cybersecurity: Think about how much you protect your house or your apartment. You lock your door, or you might have a security system. But now, what do we do with our data that's on our computers, that's on our phone? If we think about the data that's on there, that oftentimes is as valuable. If not more so, then what's in our house? But are we protecting it the same way? That's why we really want to discuss privacy and what we need to do to be secure? Even though, we've discussed passwords and you've heard about it from so many people and so many media sources over the years. When we actually look at the most popular passwords every year, it's usually something like password, "Password1234." I love you. A very simplistic phrases that are easy to remember from the user's standpoint, but also unfortunately very easy to hack into. A lot of times we make simplistic passwords because well, we need to remember our passwords and it becomes very difficult. That's why a lot of people use password managers. That is just a system that would allow you to have a one type of sign in. That's going to then sign into all those different platforms and sites that you yourself need to get into. As with anything in life, there's always a trade off, and with a password manager, what you're doing is you are trading off the ease and now having to remember your passwords and oftentimes, making something more complicated by trusting that. What I would strongly recommend is if you're looking into a password manager, makes sure that that's a site that you yourself would trust. The key part a lot of times when we're talking about privacy is to always be on the lookout for encryption. You want to ensure that anything dealing with your password is going to be encrypted. The way I like to think about encryption is that you are making that data invisible when it's traveling from one area to the next. If you're normally sending information from A to B, like it's a train traveling on tracks, other people oftentimes can see that train traveling and might be able to divert that train. However with encryption, you're basically making that train invisible so it can travel between those two locations and not be seen. Another key part when we're thinking about our privacy is this idea of two-factor authentication. Really, we need to move beyond just a username and password. When you're looking at two-factor, what we're considering is that there needs to be a second step. Usually in most situations, this would be sending you an additional text or message that is saying, "Is this you?" That's just one little small step that really increases your privacy. The benefit sometimes is being online as we can be anywhere when we are logging on to our account. But that's also a danger because we don't know who is using our account. That's why, let's say if you're on Twitter, they're going to send you an additional text to say, "Is this really you?" Here's the good part. Most of time that can be set up to send you a text right on your smartphone. We know, you probably have your smart phone with you. I'm guessing when you left your house or apartment today, you lock the door. But did you lock your smartphone? What you really need to think about is you might not be the only one looking at your phone. For example, if it's slipped out of your pocket, if somebody took that, what information would they have? A lock screen is a very simple way where you can prevent any type of adverse impacts in the case that somebody else is looking at your phone. An easy tip when we're thinking about our privacy is determining whether or not a network is secure. Oftentimes, we're doing work at let's say a coffee house. This is a classic example where we have to determine whether or not we're comfortable going on a public Wi-Fi. Typically, that public Wi-Fi is not going to be secured, thereby, making it more sensitive with whether or not your data can be hacked into. The way I like to think about public Wi-Fi is I'm browsing with the doors open that people are viewing what I'm viewing. I think if we're more cognizant of the vulnerabilities that were naturally happen in any type of public Wi-Fi where it's unsecured network, then it's going to cause us to browse differently. Maybe not browse, but do it in a manner where we are aware of its potential vulnerabilities. Now is the time where we can test out our knowledge of privacy. Pew Research has a great quiz where we can go through all the different areas that we've discussed with privacy, and to see what we understand or what are some of our weak spots.
5. Communication & Etiquette: In this section on digital citizenship, we're going to be looking at communication and etiquette. A major part of this section on communication and etiquette is to be more mindful with our use of technology. Oftentimes with our devices, they're basically saying just feed me, just give me data, just send a tweet. The major shift that needs to happen with digital citizenship is that we need to actually think of ourselves as a active participant that is impacting the community. Once you start thinking about that and you think about your power, you actually then say, "I have responsibility, my message impacts somebody else. Therefore, I'm going to be more thoughtful about that message." Think about communication and etiquette from an offline perspective. If you're conversing with a friend or a family member or loved one, you're looking at their face, you're seeing how it changes your reading, their non-verbal skills. This is something that has been embedded into the evolution of humans. Society over hundreds of years have crafted this idea of what's appropriate and what is considered inappropriate. However, in the digital space, we haven't had time to clearly define this. Now, with the disruption of social media and emerging technology, we're interacting in a way that is faceless and frictionless. Without faces and friction, oftentimes we think that we're not actually interacting with a real person, this can cause us to be careless with how we communicate. When we interact online, it's easy to be lulled into thinking that something can be made private. However, as we've seen by the ease of taking a screenshot, that's not always the case. For example, there's been a lot of situations where people have been using a private group on Facebook, but then because of how something was crafted or because something was inappropriate, another member of that group takes a screenshot and then sends it around and reports it. It's something we need to think of how easy our messages, even if it has this illusion of privacy, is really so easy to be made public. A clear exercise that you can do is think about your message and how that can be taken out of context. What you really want to be able to do, is create a message that is contexts proof that no matter how it's taken out of context, would not adversely impact your reputation. One of the struggles that we have when we're interacting on social media platforms specifically, is that even though we like to say, hey, it's public, we don't naturally perceive that. We usually have an intended audience. We might have an audience of our friends or our followers, so anytime we're crafting a message, we naturally assume that those are the only people that are going to be viewing that. However, as we know from a lot of stories where somebody sends a poorly crafted, let's say joke on Twitter and that gets sent around the world and causes them to lose their job, it can easily be taken out of context. One of the things that you want to do, is you want to not only think about your intended audience, but you want to think about your probable or potential audience. Trolls, they are not just for movies anymore as we've seen it with how we interact on social media platforms, a troll is somebody that is really being offensive to the community at large. This is something that needs to be sent to the platform so they can enforce their natural rules. A major part of digital communication is understanding how to respond to troll behavior. This is where counterspeech comes into play about how we interact anytime we're receiving something that maybe it's hurtful or maybe worries us. We have a lot of options, one, as we mentioned, reporting tools that every social media platform would have. But oftentimes it's also us about choosing the next step. I had an example recently where I had a negative comment sent my way on a YouTube video, that was for TEDx, talking about digital wellness. I was wondering how did I possibly offend this person? They seem so upset on this video. I chose to respond in a deliberate manner to say, "Hey, not sure why you're so offended with this video." I noticed in their response, they said, "Oh well you're involved with TEDx, and that's just promoting this cult behavior." I instantly realized, okay, the problem wasn't with me per say, they just had this grand conspiracy over the TED org. This allowed really a relief on my end and to put that in its place. The reason why this is important is one of the things that we're starting to realize with new research on troll behavior is that oftentimes it's not necessarily just about that recipient, its aggression that maybe the person has, they've even looked at the time of day that a person posts. This is important for social media interaction, how other people's comments influence other people's behavior. For example, there's been a study recently that showed that seeing negative behavior online pushes other people to post in a more negative fashion. A great thought exercise that you can do is, take a message that you've sent online and now imagine that interaction happening in real life. Take, let's say a tweet that you've sent and imagine you actually saying that directly to that person, is that something you'd be embarrassed by? Are you shouting at them? Are you being offensive? Every time we sit down to type something, we want to think about how is the recipient of that going to think about this message? How is this going to impact our reputation? How is it going to impact other people's feelings? This is where it behooves us as a empowered digital citizen to really think about the ramifications of posting any material. Next up, we're going to be looking at and talking about digital literacy.
6. Media Literacy: We live in a media-saturated world where the line between truth and fiction is incredibly blurry. This is why it's so important for us to be digital literate. Today, everybody is a content creator. You're a content creator. Everybody has a platform where they can create something and put that out into the world. While that is incredibly positive, it also comes with certain responsibilities. Consider the responsibilities that a journalist has. They have to think about the authenticity, the veracity of the statements, of how they're getting their sources, of how somebody who might disagree is being informed and having that ability to respond. Likewise, as a content creator, you're also think through the same types of ethics, the same type of idea that your voice is powerful, and with that power comes responsibility. There was a recent study showing that 59 percent of people would share an article without actually reading the article. This is incredibly dangerous because online, while there's a lot of great information, there also might be some bad actors or some people that you just might not agree with. In many ways, online, you are who you surround yourself with. Every time you like something, every time you share something, that is an endorsement, a saying that you agree somehow with this philosophy. This is why it's incredibly important to read all the information that you would share. Because by sharing it, you're endorsing it. The reason why this is difficult is because there is a strong incentive to be really quick online. There's a incentive to share something right away because you want to be the first person to have knowledge of that. What we need to do is allow for that subtle pause where we can actively think about this article. Here are three parts that I strongly recommend. First, you want to consider the source. What's the underlying bias? Every group is going to have a frame of reference, and this is something you need to consider. Next, you want to read the article. As we talked about 59 percent of Americans will share something without reading. We don't want you to be part of that 59 percent. Also, you want to think about the impact that sharing that article is going to have on the community at large. We still want to allow for that thoughtfulness. We want to allow for that slight pause to say, is this credible? What's the source? Is this something that I would be proud of by sharing? However, if we are looking into the future, the near future, we are going to have more of an issue when we're discussing videos. There's been a lot of examples recently. You might have seen the fake Obama video where you can make something seem realistic. You can alter somebody's appearance to make it seem like they're saying something that they're not. The reason why this is important is because we really need to separate fact from fiction. We need to know whether or not we're consuming something that is authentic or it's fabricated. One of the key parts about media literacy is understanding the underlying bias. Really, what that means is that yes, there is an objective truth, but at the same time, every person or every outlet has a frame of reference or has a direction that they're coming from. To be media literate is to be cognizant of this and allow it to maybe color your opinion or take something with a small grain of salt. For example, if I am looking into an issue, I want to allow myself to read it from multiple angles to then make the best determination about how I feel on his issue. What you can do and what I recommend and what I do is I try to get outside of my own echo chamber. There are services now where you can sign up where it actually gives you a make-up of your social media platform, who you're connected with, and what their bias might be. You can actually nudge yourself outside of that. Our next step in his discussion on digital citizenship, we're going to be looking at rights and responsibility.
7. Rights & Responsibilities Laws: In this section, we're looking at the digital rights and responsibilities. Every time you're interacting with the platform, you're holding yourself to the rules that they created, basically as a company, they are allowed to say, ''Here's how you can interact, here's something you'd be kicked out for, here is something that would be viewed as inappropriate.'' These are their terms of service. That's something that by signing up and usually clicking a check box, you have agreed to. We oftentimes like to frame social media as a public square. I would strongly disagree with this because we are expecting a public square inside of a publicly traded company. This is dramatically different than how we would think of a concept like freedom of speech, because with freedom of speech, we are looking towards the governmental body right through the judicial system that is reviewing whether something is appropriate or inappropriate. If we take that to the digital space, this is something that is going to be applied with their terms of service, where they're making all these decisions. But have you read those terms of service? Probably not. In one study where they set up a hypothetical social media platform called Namedrop, they found that a 98 percent of participants would agree to give away their firstborn child because you know what, nobody reads those terms of service. But as a digital system, we want to be more deliberate about our interaction online therefore we want to think about what are we giving away? What is this trade-off anytime we're interacting online? We know that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Well, you know what? There's no such thing as a free app or free social media platform. We'd like to say if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. That's exactly the setup of most traditional social media platforms, that you're giving your currency as data in exchange for the use of their platform. They do this by collecting every time we like something, they're seeing where we live, they're estimating what our salary is, what type of person we are, our age, other aspects of our personality that we usually give away. This is monetized by making it a attractive way for marketers to target us. Basically it's an indirect route every time we are interacting on a platform that is allowing greater precision that can then be sold off to marketers. A great shift in thinking about our digital rights and responsibilities is considering our data as if it's a currency. Every time, you sign and agree to a terms of service, you're going to say, ''What am I giving and what am I receiving?'' If what you're receiving seems a good deal then thumbs up, then life is good and everybody's happy. However, oftentimes the data that they might be taking from you might be more than you think is appropriate and might be something that you view as a sensitive area that you would rather not give up that data. The key part is to be an educated user into turning into a digital citizen that is realizing how that company is being monetized. We don't always understand online what we're agreeing to. A privacy policy is a great example. Recently, there was a study that was done showing that a significant amount of Americans misunderstood the very concept of a privacy policy. The issue that was happening is by seeing that there was a privacy policy, these individuals assumed that that was a stamp of approval. It's not a stamp of approval. A privacy policy is merely saying that if you read this document, that is going to explain how the data is collected and potentially how it's monetized. Privacy policies used to be called Information Practice statements, why? Because that's what they are. A privacy policy is not a stamp of approval. It's merely saying, how is this information going to be used. It seems there's lot of miscommunication and confusion about this. A big shift that we need to have is to be more considerate. Think, how are they making money on this when I have a privacy policy, don't just accept that? Think, how are they going to use your information? What we need to remember with our rights and responsibilities is we are impacting somebody else's rights and responsibilities. Oftentimes we can download something and share it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we have the right to do that. Most photos, for example, are covered by copyright. Copyright law gives the protection a limited monopoly of your life as a creator plus 70 years. That's a long protection. That also means that we might be creating a copyright violation every time we share an image that we don't have the right to do. I would highly recommend checking out the area of Creative Commons. Creative Commons is a concept that has really evolved since the dawning of the Internet of saying that we want to share a lot of images but because copyright is such a large protection of being life plus 70, that doesn't necessarily always work well online. Creative Commons is this concept that we are allowing more flexibility. Instead of having this limited monopoly, we are allowing the creator to actually say, ''Here's where I would be fine with usage of this photo.'' For example, if I'm creating a photo, I might say, ''You know what? I don't mind if somebody uses this as long as it's not for commercial purposes and if it's a soda company that's using it, well, then I want to be paid.'' Those are restrictions that I'm allowed to place on by choosing the right rights and responsibilities under Creative Commons. Fair use is a really interesting concept when we're talking about rights and responsibilities. Fair use is this exemption to copyright law which is saying that it's also in the public interest to allow certain usages of images. For example, when you have news, they need to use images and they can't clear those rights all the time because the news is giving something that is beneficial. They usually have those rights to do that. One of the considerations we want to have with fair use is really how transformative? How useful is this content that we are creating? Fair use unfortunately, is not a clear cut answer, and that's something that I really want to emphasize. When you are creating content the more beneficial that content is to society and the less amount of content that you're using, the more likely you are to have a fair use argument. A common legal issue that I see all the time is people connecting image use with profit. They assume that, ''Hey, if I'm not making money off this use of somebody else's image then it's perfectly fine.'' That unfortunately isn't true. The truth is that copyright law is not directly connected with profit. That it really goes to the underlying rights that that individual, that the content creator that you're borrowing from, that they have for that and that's something that we want to have more consideration over. Oftentimes, if you are a content creator, one of the best options to go about when you're creating something is to actually reach out to that rights holder and then start having a conversation about what you are allowed to do. If you don't have permission to use a photo, you'd be best not to actually use that or actually go out and try to get that permission. The other option, as we have lots of options, is to find public domain photos or find something that's in Creative Commons and then look at the specifics of that underlying license.
8. Final Thoughts: Now that we've gone through the five areas of digital citizenship and really taken a holistic look at all the areas to be thoughtful online. I hope this has caused a paradigm shift. We need to go from mindless consumption to mindful consumption. We need to go from just using something to being deliberate about it. This can have major positive ramifications for our life, for our productivity, for our creativity anytime we're creating content. Now that you've completed this class on digital citizenship, I hope you've realized that it can change your behavior for a very positive manner. You can be more thoughtful. You can not just be a passive consumer of information, but actually somebody who is educated, empowered, and engaged when they go online. So if this has changed your behavior, please tell me. Share with the community at large, share around this content. Let's spread the word and let's not just be digital, but be digital citizen
David Polgar, Digital Citizenship Expert
