Digital Literacy and Security Awareness.

Did you know that 50% of the population in the USA, Brazil, Germany, China, South Africa and Egypt do not understand the basics of digital literacy? - WEF

In fact, after I really thought about it, this data should not have shocked me that much.

Let’s take one step back and understand the literacy concept. According to Wikipedia:

“Literacy is traditionally meant as the ability to read, write, and use arithmetic. The modern term's meaning has been expanded to include the ability to use language, numbers, images, computers, and other basic means to understand, communicate, gain useful knowledge and use the dominant symbol systems of a culture.” - Wikipedia

While the first registers of written communication date from 3,500-3,000 BCE, the literacy was considered a privilege of the powerful for centuries. Only during Middle Age when book production started to grow, and then during the Enlightenment that the access to literacy became more important to the Western World. However, it was only at the end of 19th and beginning of 20th centuries that rates of literacy approached universality in early-industrialized countries. It took us centuries to reverse from a 12% literate population in 1820 to a 17% illiterate population in the 21st century.

So, how can we expect people to be digital literate with only a few decades of digital experience? The biggest differentiators are the percentage of our population with access to the digital world, the pace of the changes and the increasing dependency of our global economy on digital technology. So let’s understand what is digital literacy?

"Digital literacy is the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills.” - American Library Association's digital-literacy task force

Finding, evaluating, creating and communicating information digitally are the 4 basics concepts of digital literacy.

Finding

The concept of finding information in the digital world is pretty much similar to the same concept in the real world. The difference is mainly the resources we have available, volumes, velocity.

When we look at the sets of skills you need they are pretty much simple and easy to teach. But even been simple, in comparison with finding information in the real world the set of skills are definitely broader. While in the real world, we will need to find a library or bookstore and browse the stacks for books and them use the table of context or flip the pages to find the information. To be digital literate you will need to learn to query a search engine using keywords and navigate the results, and no less important you will need to evaluate the reliability of your sources

Evaluating (or reading and comprehension)

In the real world reading and comprehension may not be that simple for some of us, remember that we still have 17% of the illiterate population and in some countries, like Brazil, the comprehension piece of the reading is not always taken under consideration when assessing the literacy of the people. But the sets of skill required are pretty much, reading, flipping pages, critical thinking…

In the virtual world, the finding information is much more dynamic as you are presented with hyperlinks, videos, audio clips, images, interactive graphics, share buttons, or a comments section that will present the user with multiple paths and force them to make decisions faster. Presented with multiple possibilities will also require the user to maintain the focus and attention on the final goal in order to be productive. The user determines when to stray from the original text and to where and to which depth to pursue the new path.

Creating data

Again writing and all other communication skills, are valuable skills in the real world, skills that we all invest on to improve.

Digital literacy includes creating in digital formats such as videos, “snaps” and podcasts and writing an email, blogs, and Tweets and “WhatsApp” in the required digital “language” that depending on the channel, may vary from the regular language you use on your day by day conversations. Creating contexts in any world require creativity and many times collaboration. In the digital world, the collaboration factor is facilitated the majority of the material are created to be shared and commented.

Communicating

Communicating requires a full set of valuable skills, as said before. Critical thinking, common sense, risk-taking, problem-solving, privacy rights and respect are among of them. That’s, in my opinion, is the most critical set of skills in literacy in general. In the digital world, where the majority of the tools are designed to facilitate the information sharing and therefore the audience and the reach of a publication increase exponentially, those skills acquire more importance.

Digital communication can be a powerful tool for good and for bad.

Another critical knowledge to me, but that normally is not considered in the digital literacy concept is security knowledge. As in the real world, in the digital world sense of security is acquired mostly based on your previous experiences, story sharing, and common sense. Unfortunately, that’s not enough. The lack of security knowledge may damage your virtual presence but many time it will affect your real life deeply. Daily we become aware of new threats, but when those threats are found and reported normally it is too late for the first victims. New threats are created and spread every hour, so being cybersecurity informed nowadays is a matter of surviving.

This interpretation of digital literacy is only one of the multiple interpretations the term can carry. I did not explore here the coding piece that some people consider part of the literacy as well as the proficiency on specific digital tools. I also did not explore the concepts of online presence and derived data, which are very important for those who really want to be digitally fluent and security aware.

Do you want to know more about what’s behind your online presence and it risks?

Source: Digital Literacy: Forging Agreement on a Definition - November 9, 2016,