DL 317

All Kinds of Bad Behavior

Welcome back, all. Here is Digitally Literate, issue #317.

🔖 Key Takeaways

📚 This Week’s Highlights

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory this month saying the youth mental health crisis is getting worse.

Here's what schools are doing to try to address students' social-emotional needs.
Why this matters: Addressing mental health challenges is essential for fostering resilient and well-rounded students.

Stephen Kinsella is the founder of Clean Up The Internet, an independent UK organization dedicated to improving the level of online discourse. In this post in Aeon, Kinsella suggests that anonymous users generate most of the toxic abuse and conspiracy theories online. The right to be anonymous should be curtailed.

The opening paragraph succinctly describes the last couple of years of my research and thinking.

"We have come a long way from the optimism that surrounded the internet in the early 1990s. As Tim Berners-Lee has remarked several times, there was a ‘utopian’ view of its potential to democratize news and reinforce social cohesion. Indeed, only 10 years ago, we were celebrating the role that online communications played in the Arab Spring. Now, when the subject of social media is mentioned, it is far more often associated with organizations such as QAnon or the riots at the United States Capitol; with wild conspiracy theories, or the bullying and silencing of women and minority groups."
Why this matters: Reimagining online spaces to foster respectful discourse is crucial for societal progress.

Zachary Loeb in Real Life as part of their Syllabus for the Internet series explores how technological failures reveal our deep dependence on digital tools.

"Few things reveal the extent of our reliance on a particular technology quite like having that piece of technology suddenly and unexpectedly stop working. And though our days are punctuated by small and mildly annoying malfunctions, there is always the risk of more serious technological breakdowns, the sort that can truly turn our world upside down: the plane that crashes, the ship that gets stuck in the canal, the web platform outage that leaves us unsure how to communicate with the people we care about, or the power plant that melts down."
Why this matters: Recognizing our reliance on technology can inspire better preparation and resilience.

4. Smartphones Are a New Tax on the Poor

Julia Ticona in Wired.

"...Connectivity to the internet is increasingly required to manage many different types of jobs in parts of low-wage labor markets far beyond 'gig economy' apps like Uber and Postmates. In ignoring these hidden kinds of connectivity, we don’t see their mounting costs, and the consequences for marginalized people. The requirement to maintain their connectivity constitutes a kind of new tax on low-wage workers. And well-meaning interventions focused on closing the digital divide haven’t addressed the powerful interests at work keeping it open."
Why this matters: Addressing the hidden costs of connectivity is key to closing the digital divide.

Over the past six years, a little-known private equity firm, Vista Equity Partners, has built an educational software empire that wields unseen influence over the educational journeys of tens of millions of children. The companies the firm controls have scooped up a massive amount of very personal data on kids, which they use to fuel a suite of predictive analytics products that push the boundaries of technology’s role in education and, in some cases, raise discrimination concerns.

Vista Equity Partners has acquired controlling ownership stakes in some of the leading names in educational technology, including Ellucian, EAB, and PowerSchool.

The ed tech companies in Vista’s portfolio appear to operate largely independently, but they have entered into a number of partnerships that deepen the ties of shared ownership.
Why this matters: Transparency and ethical practices in edtech are critical for protecting students.

According to a new paper in Applied Cognitive Psychology speeding up the content consumption process may not negatively impact comprehension...to an extent.
Why this matters: Efficient content consumption strategies can enhance learning without sacrificing understanding.

🛠️ DO: Use Zotero as a Bookmark Manager

I've used many tools to keep track of my bookmarks as I read online. For the past couple of years, I've been using Pinboard to openly share bookmarks.

With the new year, I've been trying out new tools to change up my workflow. One of those tools is testing out Zotero, the open source reference manager to collect everything. I'm really happy with the results so far.

Explore Zotero.

🌟 Closing Reflection

“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”
— Malcolm X

Reflect and Engage

Thank you for reading Digitally Literate. Stay tuned for more insights and discussions. Connect with me at hello@digitallyliterate.net or explore Newsletter Index for all past issues.

All kinds of bad behavior is on the rise. Is society falling apart at the seams...or is it just the U.S.?