What does it mean to live in a digital world
Imagine your life without digital devices enabling you to connect with friends and family 24/7? It’s actually difficult to imagine this given that we are surviving a pandemic. In the digital age, our connection with friends and family depends strongly on digital engagement. We wouldn’t develop such strong and affectionate bonds without being able to communicate digitally.
Digital engagement
Digital engagement has been constantly evolving and improving to provide us -digital citizens- with the best and fastest way to communicate with our loved ones. Hence, digital communication can be differentiated in the way it is carried out. For instance, a distinction can be made whether it is synchronous communication meaning it is a live chat or a phone call or whether it is asynchronous communication carried through emails.
How does digital engagement enhance our standard of living? Well, as a start, it widens the scope of the people you can reach to such as family member that live in a different country due to work condition. Video calls are very valuable communication tool in this case, it allows us to communicate using both audio and video which improves the quality of the communication. Under the guidelines issued due to the pandemic, the way to overcome the loneliness feeling that was caused by social distancing is through video calls.
Another way in which digital engagement has helped us is that it boosted civil activist opportunities to express their opinions and concerns about ongoing issues to raise awareness not only in their small communities but reaching the global extent as well. These online platforms have also encouraged social participants to fundraise their activities. This kind of participation will have a positive impact on the social skills and norms of digital citizens.
Covid-19 example
A very recent example to illustrate how digital engagement has helped digital citizens is during Covid-19, governments have imposed social distancing rules to lower the spread of the virus. Thanks to technological advancements, the adaptation process was smooth and easy. Even though people were physically disconnected, they were still able to be digitally connected through video call and texting apps. One way of how digital citizens adapted to the situation was witnessed by a rise in the registration to the massive open online classes (MOOCs). For instance, Udemy and Skillshare platforms are designed to provide various online workshops relating to creative topics such as photography and animation. In addition, Coursera is an online platform focused on educational courses that are offered by prestigious universities. The rise in the demand for these courses implies that digital natives can now enjoy the flexibility of online learning through choosing their preferred time while also expanding their pool of skills, thanks to how digital engagement has made life easier.
Cyber attacks
However, ever since digital engagement became a greater part of the society, it exposed digital citizens to various threats including cyberattacks and addiction. Cyber-attacks aim to attack a device whether it is a tablet or computer to either access information, disable a device or even steel confidential data.
A very common example of cyberattack is malicious software, our devices are subjected to a malware virus by a suspicious link that is sent via email and this is known as phishing, or maybe a USB drive that is set up automatically to download a virus. Another example of cyberattack that cybercriminals often cause is denial of service. This is where an attacker sends traffic to a website or a database leading to systems exhaustion and as a result the systems functionality is negatively affected. It is therefore very crucial to find ways that could minimise the effects of cyberattack and avoid them as much as possible especially that in the information age, a wide range of corporations and organisations store unimaginable amount of data on the servers. To protect such data and systems from crashing, cybersecurity can be applied to these practices. The application of cybersecurity can be carried out in different forms including network security and application security. Implementing those securities will secure a computers network and install software that will ensure a device isn’t exposed to threats.
Internet addiction
As we are living in a digital age, users can sometimes fall in the trap and interfere the activities they practice online with their daily lives. The problem is that the internet has taken over, we continuously use the internet for almost everything. Can’t find the specific size of a piece of cloth? Need to order food or groceries? The internet has got your back! You don’t need to go anywhere, just google it and that’s it. I understand that the internet in these cases may seem as an effective and advanced solution, however, this can trigger many forms of addictions to raise in our societies.
In the past few years, researches and studies reported a significant increase of internet addiction among young people. Internet addiction is a categorized as behaviour addiction that people often lay on to cope with life’s stress. Another concern that has emerged is the constant fear of missing out (FOMO). Active participation notification and “presence features” allow users to know when each person is online. For example, users tend to constantly refresh their social media newsfeed to see what’s going on, what the latest new and what are the hot topics people are speaking about. This addictive nature of social media apps is due to how compulsive this can be. It is reported that as users are exposed to more news and information, they start to feel more anxious. Seeing other people enjoying their holiday or experiencing the excitement of life, we feel that we are actually missing out and that our lives aren’t as good. Hence, as we are being more engaged, this can lead to make us feel worse about our lives.
Despite these negative impacts, it’s our responsibility as digital citizens to always monitor ourselves. We need to recognize what are the underlying factors that triggers the unavoidable resistance of using the internet and adapt some sort of skills to counteract that. IT might also be useful to distinguish between the essential and non-essential use of the internet.
Reflection
As an accounting and finance student, I always aim to take subjects that allow me to explore the world outside the context of numbers and calculations. I want to make the most out of my university time and make sure that my experience at university widens the scope of my knowledge and understanding of contemporary issues. I am always fascinated with how fast our world is revolving and how the technological advancement has changed things around us, and as the pace at which these improvements are carried out is unprecedent, the extent of their impact can sometimes be unimaginable. I therefore decided to take digital society, thinking that will allow me to understand the implications of living in the digital age
It was a great experience to study a subject that is very up to date with the real world. I was introduced to technical terms that I often hear people talk about, but I didn’t actually understand what they refer to, these include smart cities and the internet of things. However, I was quite uncertain of the fact that this module is delivered online completely and had some doubts before the start of the academic year. Once everything was clear on how the module will be delivered online and I saw the platform, I felt that it was very comfortable and engaging. The flow of information of this module made it super easy to follow the structure and hence, grasp the main ideas.
Another challenge that I faced was how am I going to write a blogpost especially that I haven’t actually written anything similar before. The informal writing type is something that I was unfamiliar with before taking this unit, but as we progressed, I developed the basic skills required and understood how to write a blogpost. Using medium to publish the blogpost made also so frustrating and worrying at the start, but thankfully, I was able to use the functions properly and reference the pictures correctly through the instructions provided. This experience introduced me to a style of writing that I didn’t know I actually enjoy writing informally. I am therefore wiling to expand this experience and get more engaged in writing blogs.
As we explored different topics, there certain topics that I found them very interesting to know about. Targeted advertising was one of the top sub-topics that had my full attention. I have always wondered how it is possible that the advertisement that appear on my mobile phone are exactly related to the things that I have searched for online. I was able to find the answer of what goes behind the scenes. I was shocked by how our data, for example searching history is all saved and then used in different ways.
Overall, this unit has helped me develop skills such as informal writing, building critical views on current issues. It was very practical and useful to have the course being delivered online particularly with the current case of covid-19. This experience might be very useful for the future.
