Learning Digital Literacy Is Key

Digital literacy is the key component of democratizing the internet. A digitally-literate person has the technical skills to navigate the internet. A digitally-literate person is also media literate, with the ability to critically evaluate the content received and consumed online. Unless we train ourselves, and particularly our children, how to understand and use the internet, it can never realize its vast potential to serve the common good. We must be a digitally literate people. We are not that now. We need to be a digitally literate and media literate people. Our goal should be that every American possess the skills necessary to discern trustworthy from untrustworthy information, fact from opinion, news from infotainment, and real information from misinformation, all derived from a resource-rich media. It is tough slogging to make sense of the barrage of material crowding our computer screens and warping our politics. For some, the easiest route is to pick the opinion narrative that best suits their ideologies, look at nothing else, and shout it from the roof-tops. But if we are serious about overcoming the mountain of obstacles that our kids and our country confront, we must make digital literacy a truly key priority. There is no time to waste.

[Michael Copps is a former Federal Communications Commissioner; he is currently with Common Cause.]