As an experienced marketer in tech industry for more than 10 years and as a new father to a 4 months baby. I have this fear on how to teach my kid to face the world in the future. As the world that we know will totally change with all the technological advancement in Virtual / Augmented Reality, Crypto, Etc. With this, I stumble upon this book “Digital for Good” by Richard Culatta.
I found this book helped me to frame on how to set a good digital mindset to face the future. So, I decided to put a summary of this book to help myself to implement this new mindset.
To start, this book teaches me that there is new norm that we should implement towards ourselves and our kids which is DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP. It’s all about how we should behave on the digital world, similar towards our approach in the real world where there is a norm that we should held such as no stealing, use proper clothes in public, honor those older than you, etc. Moving forward there are certain norms that we must implement and agreed upon when we’re in the digital world e.g., you need to use proper clothes when creating content, stealing content in digital world is not right, etc. With this as a thought starter there are 5 principles that this book share
1. Balanced Digital Citizens
There are certain habits that we have to balance in our digital activity. As we’re balancing our routines such as eating healthy food, exercising, etc. Digital activity has its balance as there are tons of activities that we can do in the digital world: playing games (my refreshment time), meetings / virtual class, relationship (social media, video call, etc). We need to be aware on each of the activities and ensure that our activities are balanced. One super good tip that I found in this book is resetting our language when we’re talking of digital habit such as the phrase YOU’VE BEEN PLAYING THAT GAME FOR TOO LONG. We’re not supposed to focus on the game (single digital activity) but are we valuing that game too high? This can be applied to other activities as well such as Netflix, Youtube, etc. Instead of saying that phrase, having a conversation on having other digital activities with kids will help to develop a more balance digital activity
2. Informed Digital Citizens
We’re living in a world where there are tons of information influx that we can get, and it creates the situation where hoax and reality is getting vague. One skill that becoming must have for us (and probably more important in the future) is understanding how to identify the truth. In this book, he told us that learning (learning to love learning) is one of the key aspects to be able to do that. For me, I would like to set myself to be radically open mind and questions everything. By questioning everything, we’re able to become a curator of a piece of information. One good tip here is deep dive on certain topics in digital (basically teaching them to get RIGHT information in internet) together with our kids and make it a habit.
3. Inclusive Digital Citizens
One thing that my good mentor told me when I was starting my career “hate the act, do not hate the persons.” This principle taught me to have respect to everyone although they have different perspectives compare to mine. In the “real world” when someone has a different opinion there are boundaries that we cannot cross (punching him in the face, etc), in the digital world there are no set of norms to do that. We’re taught to be polite to everyone, but is it relevant in digital world? IT IS!! That’s what we must teach our kids (societies probably).
4. Engaged Digital Citizens
Digital is a tool for us human, that’s my mindset as a marketer in Indonesia. It is something that is fundamentally needs to be understand that we digital world is our tool to solve a certain problem. There are tons of activities that we can do in the digital world to improve ourselves and our communities. One thing that this COVID-19 pandemic taught me is working online from home has the similar results by working from the office (although I missed working in café). I saw how the digital world helps my parent to interact with their church communities and it is beautiful. I believe that digital is a tool for us human and it is up to us to use it for goods or evil. One challenge for me is to create a collaboration digital activity for my kids, hopefully this will embed good engaged digital citizenship in their mind.
5. Alert Digital Citizens
As we prepare lock for our houses, the same mindsets should be made for us in the digital world activities. As the digital money rises (e money, crypto, etc) we should protect our tools in the digital. There are tons of tools that we can use as a parent, monitoring their playstore / Appstore apps, monitoring wi-fi, etc. The most important thing is teaching our kids to be able to secure their privacy in the digital world. As the social media becoming our tools to communicate with others (in a hyper scalability) we should not compromise on our privacy. How we put content in our social media, what to share in our social groups, etc.
When I finished reading this book, I don’t think that it is an easy task as it is a continuous process for me as well. I believe that in order to implement these principles I need to collaborate together with my wife and my kid. Hopefully by setting up a mindset to become a digital citizen, my kid can become someone who can become a blessing to others in the future.
