Our digital world is here to stay, and while it offers great promise, it’s also fraught with peril, especially for our students. Changes to our society and communication have been so rapid that the new rules of the road are being written as we’re speeding down it.

Statistics are staggering. According to the PEW Research Center, 95 percent of all teens from 12 to 17 years of age are online; 88 percent own cell phones; and 91 percent text. The same survey found that 81 percent of teens use social media, sharing more personal information than ever before. Yet, just 54 percent of parents report they filter or monitor their child’s online activities.

Digital media’s youngest users are some of its most vulnerable: 33 percent of teens report they have been bullied online; 1 in 6 teens report online contact by someone they did not know, which made them scared or uncomfortable; and 88 percent of teens have witnessed mean or cruel behavior on social media.

Many educators have embraced digital citizenship to teach students how to steer clear of these potholes and avoid accidents. Digital citizenship can be defined as navigating through online media responsibly, effectively and safely. Teaching these skills helps students think through ethical dilemmas they encounter online every day in order to ultimately make better decisions.

Many adults assume students are savvier than they are in the online world, but knowing how to use the latest text-messaging app does not necessarily translate to knowing how to handle cyberbullying. Many young people lack the maturity and life experience to handle problematic situations deftly on social media, just as they would struggle to handle them in the offline world.

Howard Gardner, whom you may know for his theory of multiple intelligences, has developed the Good Play project because of this ethics gap in our digital media world. Gardner has identified five ethical standards in Internet media: identity, privacy, authorship, credibility and participation. Online behaviors ranging from cyberbullying to plagiarism are part of the digital citizenship landscape.

Teaching digital citizenship offers important, real-world skills, but how do we integrate it into our already jam-packed classrooms? If you can teach an entire unit or lesson on digital citizenship, an excellent curriculum is offered by Common Sense Media and Edutopia maintains a thorough resource page. The majority of us, though, will have to tackle digital citizenship in smaller chunks.

Some ideas:

• Use safe social media platforms in your classroom and model positive online behavior. EdModo, Google Classroom or blog-based online discussions offer fertile ground for creating your own community guidelines for posts. Have the class create rules together, and cycle students through the role of online moderator.
• Write narratives using digital ethical situations in a “what would you do” style.
• Design posters or comics demonstrating good digital citizenship and display them throughout your school.
• Create online profiles for fictional characters or historical figures. Show examples of both positive and negative online behaviors that accurately represent these individuals, and then rate their digital ethics.
• Assign online research and discuss authorship and plagiarism. Have clear guidelines in place so students understand expectations and consequences.
• Combine digital citizenship with other character education/anti-bullying initiatives in your school.

Understanding digital citizenship can have an immediate effect on our students’ lives while preparing them to be good people — both online and offline.