EDITORIAL - Digital literacy

The pandemic forced millions to migrate online for many activities. Locked down at home, people ordered food, groceries, medicine and a wide range of other goods online, continued their formal education in virtual classrooms, consulted doctors and conducted financial transactions digitally.

The problem, as the incoming head of the Department of Information and Communications Technology pointed out, is that many people were forced to go digital overnight with little awareness of basic safety rules in using ICT.

Similar problems have cropped up in many countries that resorted to lockdowns to contain the spread of COVID-19. Child welfare advocates, for one, have noted a global surge in online sexual exploitation of children during the pandemic. The advocates have also lamented the adverse impact of distance learning especially on young children who were unfamiliar with digital technology before they were forced to migrate to online learning.

Apart from these problems, there has been a spike in online financial fraud, as people with rudimentary knowledge of digital technology fall for scams offering jobs or large returns on investment. There have also been numerous complaints related to substandard products and services procured through e-commerce.

Even news consumption has suffered as surveys show that a majority of Filipinos cannot distinguish between accurate and fake news, and believe even the anonymous and unaccountable stories that freely proliferate on social media. The line between opinion and straight news reporting has been blurred by self-styled “reporters” with no training in journalism and who do not answer to any accountable news organization.

The plan of the incoming DICT chief to include digital literacy in the basic education curriculum is an idea that deserves consideration. It will need cooperation from the Department of Education especially in the crafting of learning modules. The incoming government should also consider developing a digital literacy program tailored for seniors, for whom ICT use is not intuitive, and who are now compelled to transact many businesses online.

In exclusive schools where students are mostly from well-off families, digital literacy begins at home at an early age, even before a child enters kiddie school. But this is not the case in the typical low-income household where parents cannot afford a cell phone for every adult member or even the monthly fees for basic internet access. Promoting digital literacy is one of the programs that must be quickly initiated when the new administration comes in.