Digital literacies: a lifelong endeavour
Caroline Tagg and Korina Giaxoglou (The Open University)
In our digitally connected world, staying on top of the latest technologies is a lifelong endeavour. Social media and mobile messaging platforms constantly update and develop, and how we engage online also shifts as we get older – many younger people socialise across multiple online spaces while older people draw on digital technologies to organise busy schedules. What is important across generations is the growing need to protect and enhance our digital wellbeing from the pressures of being ‘always on’. This is realised in the growing opportunities to engage in ‘digital detox’, ranging from phone-free weekend retreats to ‘analogue lifestyles’.
Of course, it is not always possible to quit all social media platforms and mobile messaging apps. What is known as ‘digital disconnection’ involves learning to disconnect in nuanced ways that enable us to engage in healthier connections with friends and family, both online and offline. Technological strategies for doing this involve keeping a phone in silent mode, leaving it at home when one goes for a walk, or turning off the notifications for certain platforms or contacts.
English Studies can help document how these technological tactics intertwine with interactional and linguistic strategies that also work to keep people at desired distances. One crucial mobile messaging strategy involves disrupting the timing or rhythm of an online exchange, delaying a message in order to avoid the back-and-forth of an immediate conversation. Another is to word messages in ways that acknowledge receipt without inviting further conversation, something that can now also be done through social media reactions (see image above). Such strategies are learnt, adopted, discarded as we move through life, but English studies can serve to raise awareness of our digital literacies, enabling people of all ages to more consciously monitor and manage their digital wellbeing.
Caroline Tagg is Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at The Open University; Korina Gioaxoglou is Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and English Language, also at The Open University
