Digital Citizenship: a developmental perspective

Abstract

Citizenship refers to the process, right and intellectual capacities of the members of a society to participate fully according to the prevailing standards and to share in that society’s social and cultural heritage. Technological advancement influences society along two distinct and interconnected dimensions. Firstly, technology connects the human mind across time and space. It democratizes the dissemination of information and empowers individuals, allowing almost anyone, children included, to spread their voices/ideas across the globe. Secondly, technology augments human performance through tools that extend our physical and/or cognitive capacities. This, coupled with easy access to information, materials and artefacts, also has an empowering effect that liberates human creativity and entrepreneurship. These advances also create new challenges. People are now prone to being over-connected because of ever-present technology-mediated connectivity, which creates stress and noise that exert an impact on our cognitive, social, and emotional functioning. The end result could be information overload, a loss of focus, over-indulgence in the cyber world and, ironically, social isolation. This presentation explores the research challenges in understanding digital citizenship as intellectual capacities from a human development perspective.