Read the Signs

For more on the Digital Literacy Report 2009 have a look at last week’s interview with Louis Halpern, chief executive of Halpern Cowan which commissioned the report.

Last week’s Digital Literacy Report published last week found that 69% of parents want compulsory lessons in online privacy to be introduced to school curricula. Newspapers, digital experts and politicians are calling for a national commitment to the education of a digitally “literate” generation. But how did “literacy” come to mean “safety”, and what do teachers and psychologists mean when they talk about a kind of “literacy” which will keep children safe? Isn’t literacy supposed to be a thrilling, freeing thing?

In the traditional sense “literacy” meant that a child had been given the keys to a world of knowledge and opinion, and left to roam more or less freely. We tend to think that restricting ideas is more dangerous than publishing ideas. That’s why there aren’t legal age restrictions on books, let alone the internet, and that’s why everything from crime thrillers to political philosophy is freely available at your local library. As I and generations of teenagers before me gleefully discovered.

The thing is, “literacy” is far more than just being fluent in the latest internet slang. It’s a good term for the kind of tricky balance we’re trying to achieve with Kwercus, a balance between giving kids security and giving them the tools to choose. Literacy means being able to read the situation around you, and understand the tools of communication which are available. And privacy is the most important tool online.

When I was a young teenager making my first forays into the internet, my Mum worried that I was being exposed to material which would somehow change me. She had heard, after all, that there were some strange people out there. Certainly, there were sites which I wouldn’t necessarily read while she was in the room, but I certainly wasn’t going to get wittingly or unwittingly recruited by white supremacists when I should have been playing footy with the other lads.

After all, it’s a pretty rare person who can be “converted” to any way of thinking by reading a book alone. For most people, and especially teenagers, ideas are powerful when they affirm your relations with others, whether through sharing hobbies or sharing grudges.

Because of that, young people today are online in a world with significantly more potential for heartache or damage. The YouGov survey found that 48% of parents worried their children’s university or job prospects might be damaged because of their digital presence now. An innocuous remark between friends could be preserved online, and might be enough to discourage an employer or a University. And because the "tone" of a message is so difficult to judge online, a child could easily get caught up in seemingly harmless communication which causes real hurt.

So what does “literacy” have to do with setting a standard of behaviour? It’s because when a world of communication can be accessed through your screen, literacy means being able to read and understand the situation as well as the headlines.

Children and parents are faced with an array of security options online which are much more difficult to “read” that the real world. That makes some important decisions far more difficult to make: who could be listening to you, and how you might sound to them. Most often staying safe is just a question of changing your settings, but it’s also about listening to the conversation around you and working out what could be damaging.

It’s called “ambient awareness”, and it’s set to be one of the most important skills children learn in a world increasingly concerned with identity and privacy. Just like any kind of skill or “literacy”, it will never keep children completely safe, but a solid grounding in some of its principles should help ensure that whatever happens to young people online, it will be their choice.