21st Century Literature
Literate. It means something different to everyone. Somehow, we all have a general understanding of what it means. As a society, particularly one that is so heavily pushed towards technology and social media, the term illiterate gets thrown around and threatened consistently. No one wants to be called illiterate it threatens our intellect. It is one of those elements of digital literacy, of an understanding that we as a society can hide behind a keyboard and say things, act differently, be a different person than we would be in “real life;” but that’s what makes the internet a special place. The internet has added something new to our lives, a new element to the term literacy; that of digital literacy.
So, what exactly is digital literacy and how is it and just how is it any different than regular literacy? What in fact does it even mean to be literate in the first place? What makes someone the dreaded term illiterate? The first step to understanding literacy is that the definition doesn’t allow for a true baseline but is very situational and qualitative. There is no metric to claim someone as illiterate. That’s not to say that there are not people who are illiterate, but more so that it isn’t fair to call someone illiterate just because of your personal level of literacy.
Literacy as a whole is someone who can read and write. This leads to a major fallacy and ambiguous understanding of just what it means to be literate. Whereas literacy should be more of an understanding or showing of acknowledgement towards a specific field; which helps define what digital literacy is. Mainstream literacy is also heavily focused on the idea of regular literature and the subject of language arts. The major holes in traditional literacy comes from the system that allows us to be literate. A 3rd grader is not going to be at the same level of literacy as a college student, however would we as a society deem the child illiterate? The child in question could be proficient and be reading at a middle school level. He should be praised for his genius level of literacy, but he is still leagues below the aforementioned college student.
Literacy is a qualitative value. Such as is digital literacy. Similar to literacy, digital literacy is something that is measured differently for different people and the skills they need to know. To be digitally literate means to have a vast understanding or openness to technology or other innovative inventions. To be digitally literate means to be literate in the 21st century. Being 21st century literate means that one has skills, understanding, and openness to innovation in the digital age. Identically to literacy, it is a qualitative meaning. The expectations or level of literacy differs from person to person, depending on what is expected or needed from them. While we would expect everyone to be proficient in a word processing software and basic web browsing, not everyone is and not everyone needs to be. That could deem someone as digitally illiterate, but that also doesn’t mean that being digitally illiterate is a bad thing.
Being illiterate is thrown around as a negative term. It is treated as an insult; that doesn’t have to be the case. The same case could be presented towards digital literacy. Let’s take three different people for example: myself, my grandmother, and my uncle. My grandmother is pretty good at using word. She can change her font, size, colour of text, and other miscellaneous formatting settings. That is just about all the can do. I personally can do all that, same with my uncle. Both my uncle and I can do leagues more than my grandmother, but we both have different skills. That doesn’t make my grandmother illiterate, since she doesn’t need to worry about building a computer or troubleshooting hardware problems. She doesn’t need to understand her BIOS or even what BIOS is. I personally do, for the work I do. I need to know how to use the Adobe suite, expertly at that. It is all relative to the work that is done. My uncle works with servers for Dell, the job that he has to do is different but no more or less important than what I have to do. Not only are there many different elements to digital literacy at a higher level, it would be unfair to claim than any one of us is not digitally literate, but more to break down different aspects of digital literacy.
Even with a similar sample size and looking at a smaller variety of platforms; social media. Taking a poll of the proficient and literacy of our class and the various different social media platforms we use would show a wide difference in what we know how to use. I’m sure everyone understands Facebook, and no one would be illiterate in using Facebook, but very few would probably be able to say they are a master at it. Turn that around and look at how we use Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Reddit to name a few, and the outcome would be across the board. I know for our group alone these past weeks when looking at comparing Instagram to Twitter, only one of us uses both and feel comfortable in explaining the ins and outs of both platforms. I am illiterate in Instagram because I don’t use it and don’t know what half the buttons do, the point behind it, what to do besides post a photo. I am illiterate in that platform, but could easily become literate enough, given time. Just because someone is illiterate in a platform, doesn’t mean they can’t become literate; nor does it mean they will be illiterate for a long time.
Meme culture is also an important element of 21st century literacy. It also helps elevate the understanding of different levels of being literate. Not only the enjoyment of a meme but also the understanding of the context behind meme itself promotes ones literacy. This can be understood by none other than our favourite anthropomorphic sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea. Spongebob memes are on a whole nother level that spans across at least 4 generations. While the millennial generation explicitly grew up with Spongebob and understands the meme culture behind Spongebob, our parents endured the show with us. We would go watch it when visiting our grandma’s house and ask her to buy us a Spongebob toy. Due to its popularity, networks still show episodes from 1999 today, exposing a new generation to what we love so much. Why is this important towards being literate? Well, our generation is the one that controls much of the content on the internet; a huge factor towards being literate in the 21st century. Go to any social media platform and try to be your homepage for more than 10 minutes without seeing a Spongebob related post or meme. It’s near impossible without finetuning your feed settings.
It is easier to deem someone as literate when pertaining to books. Can they read and write to the societal expectations that their age, education, social class all dictate their literacy to be? A bit more of a simple yes and no but requires a more explicit definition. Whereas with digital literacy and being literate in the 21st century, so much many more factors must be put into place. The level of illiteracy in 21st century literacy is so much less of an impact qualitatively since most platforms are easy to figure out the basics to become literate enough, with not much effort needed; especially if taught from someone who is literate. There is a lot behind what it means to be literate in the 21st century, because we live in a world where things aren’t black and white. Meme’s and social media control what we see and how we interpret the world we live in. We live in a digital age where the device in our pocket is more powerful and can do so much more than the computers that were used to send a man to the moon. It’s something we take for granted and something that can elevate our education as a society.
References
Alber, R. (2013, January 21). Deeper Learning: Defining Twenty-First Century Literacy.Retrieved September 22, 2018, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/twe nty-first-centur y-literacy-deeper-learning-rebecca-alber
Rowsell, J., & Burke, A. (2009). Reading by design: Two case studies of digital reading practices. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy
Scott Curwood, J. (2013). The Hunger Games: Literature, Literacy, and Online Affinity Spaces. Language Arts, 90(6), 417. Retrieved September 22, 2018.
Warner, J. (2017). Adolescents’ New Literacies with and through Mobile Phones. Retrieved September 22, 2018.
