In the 21st century, being digitally literate has never been more important. For the younger generation, it’s not just about being literate, but also understanding security and how to keep yourself safe in the ever-increasingly dangerous digital world.
These days, nearly all youngsters can operate financial transactions digitally on their smartphones. But how many really have the adequate knowledge to do it as safely as they should?
This is where digital literacy events can play an important role. Scotland has just had one, with their Scottish Digital Literacy Week taking place from the 3rd to the 7th of October, organised by Education Scotland.
The event brought together a whole host of talent, and covered a wide range of topics from app prototyping, to learning how to keep your mobile devices and digital accounts more secure. And it’s the latter that we’re discussing here.
Isle of Wight is renowned for hosting great festivals
The Isle of Wight is no stranger to organising successful festivals, there’s the Garlic Festival, and the famous Isle of Wight International Scooter Rally, to name just a couple.
There has also just been another successful festival held, the Isle of Wight Literary Festival. Here, speakers ranging from Alan Titchmarsh to Alan Johnson, talked about everything from gardening to politics. Another notable speaker was former BBC journalist, Rory Cellan-Jones, who amongst other things, spoke about moving into the era of hyper-connectivity, covering smartphones, social media, etc.
Rory Cellan-Jones admits his twitter addiction #alwayon pic.twitter.com/WlnL5MOZUP
— IOWLF (@IOWLF) October 7, 2022
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But by and large, it was a wide-ranging literacy festival which wasn’t specific to the digital world. And as good as it was, it wasn’t designed to educate people in a world where digital security is becoming increasingly important.
So, is it time the Isle of Wight did host such an event? Or at the very least, added a section about digital security to the literacy festival?
Reasons a Digital Festival on the Isle of Wight would be a success
One of the most important topics covered in Scottish Digital Literacy Week was Cyber Resilience and Internet Safety. This was designed to raise awareness of how important it is to keep your devices and accounts safe. In a world where we do virtually every financial transaction digitally, it has never been more important to learn how to reduce the risk of having your accounts compromised.
These days it’s not enough to just be financially savvy, you need to be digitally savvy as well – aligning the two together. Your wages are probably paid with bacs payments, so having a basic understanding of the bacs payment process is essential, as it is one of your most important financial transactions. As well as bacs payments, your bills are paid by direct debit, you pay for goods digitally, and even most of your social transactions are made digitally. Everything from buying a coffee in the morning, to paying for an expensive holiday can be done by digital payments. So you can never learn enough.
Having a festival on the Isle of Wight that offers such information and engages people could be a great success on so many levels. It wouldn’t just educate people, it would also be a great social event, likely to bring in tourism and also help the local economy.
