Digital citizenship is
no longer just a topic for discussion it is a responsibility that teachers must
help build a better and more sustainable online community. The goal of having
people get along with one another has been a topic since the begging of time,
however, the digital frontier creates a unique environment that makes these
social interactions different than they have been in the past.
Perceived anonymity is a
concept that has been studied since the late 1800s, and it involves the
behaviors of people when they believe they are acting anonymously.
Anonymity is defined as being unknown or undefined (Hite et al., 2014) The
interesting part of this phenomenon is that there is a link to a breakdown of
social norms when a person believes they are acting anonymously. This
concept has been labeled deindividuation which means a person tends to stop
looking at their own behaviors and starts acting in a way that would be
different from how they might act in a normal social situation (Hite et al.,
2014).
The internet and all the
applications we have as a society that provides an opportunity to feel this
phenomenon of deindividuation creates a perfect storm for students, and adults
alike to act outside of their normal behaviors when interacting online.
While there needs to be much more study on this topic and its effects on people
when you think about social interactions you might have seen this sort of thing
in action in your everyday life.
One example is road
rage. When a person is in their car, they tend to act with a barrier of
anonymity compared to walking around on the street. If somebody cuts in
front of you while walking down a path, while you might be annoyed, you are
probably not shouting, making hand gestures, and getting worked up at the same
level that many do when they are in a car. There is a change in behavior
that comes from the small amount of anonymity that the car provides even though
that anonymity is only perceived. It is easy to identify a driver of a
car and locate them. The internet is the same way, only anonymity is
more complex.
So how do we as teachers
fulfill the ISTE standards for digital citizenship by
Model and promote
management of personal data and digital identity and protect student data
privacy (2000)? It has been my own experience that the best solution to
this issue is the demystification of the internet and how it works.
Through instruction about how technology works, and how information is stored, shared,
and moves about the world students will have a better understanding of why they
are not acting anonymously. This serves to remove some of the
deindividuation from the technology used and bring them into a state where they
start to compare what they are doing on the internet to how they might act in a
normal setting. This brings into alignment their own standards to the
information that they choose to share and post.
References
Hite, D. M., Voelker, T.,
& Robertson, A. (2014). Measuring perceived anonymity: The development of
a context independent instrument. Journal of Methods and Measurement in the
Social Sciences, 5(1), 22-39.
International
Society for Technology in Education. (2000). ISTE national educational
technology standards (NETS). Eugene, OR :International Society for Technology
in Education,
