A Broader View on Digital Citizenship and what it means for Me.

 "I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process." - Benjamin Harrison 

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    When you read the quote at the top of my blog, you were probably thinking something along the lines of 'is this really a blog about technology?' or 'maybe she put the wrong quote at the top?' I promise, that quote was written at the top of my blog on purpose. When we think about the word fair trade, we often associate it with food. Although that is true, there is a lot more to fair trade than just food. Here in Canada, we have stores called Ten Thousand Villages which sells fair trade items such as jewelry and pottery. I work at Portage MCC on Saturday's which sells fair trade jewelry, chocolate, and coffee. I am sure that there are many businesses that sell fair trade however I want to shift my focus to something that most people don't think of when it comes to fair trade; our smart phone. 

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    This past Monday, I had the pleasure of listening to Reynold Redekopp, our guest speaker in my Internet for Educators course. He shared with us a broader view on digital citizenship than I have heard of before. I recently did a tech task that looked at the importance of teaching students about this. I will link it here. Prior to listening to the presentation, I questioned what more there was to digital citizenship. I know now that that was narrowminded thinking so I am so grateful that Reynold was able to change my mind about the broadness of digital citizenship. Yes, digital citizenship still encompasses proper etiquette, recognizing that people can see what they write, etc., but it also has to do with much more than this. It also concerns consumers responsibility for understanding where the materials in their devices come from and how often they replace their technology. When I thought about fair trade prior to this lecture, I never thought about my devices. I associated fair trade items with foods and other goods such as jewelry. In my arts degree, I took a course called Food, Communities, and Justice with Dr. Kristen Lowitt. In that course, we had a conversation surrounding fair trade food. Our dominate food system is not designed to actually feed people. Our food system is run by larger mega company's that ship food all across the world. In order to make money they often source food/labour from other countries. Fair trade farmers have a completely different line of production. Fair trade famers on the other hand do small batch production, have better working conditions, and are able to keep more of the profit for themselves. Big companies such as Driscoll  will have workers work hard in a fruit field for a pittance so that they still have high production rates but also a high rate of return (aka profit). Reynold shared a video that gave us similar grave statistics, except that they had to do with smartphones. It was entitled Congo Calling: Bandi Mbubi at TEDxExeter. If you have a chance to watch this, I'd highly encourage you to do so because it was an eye opening experience for where the materials in my smartphone come from. This is one of those videos that would be beneficial to share over social media (hint, hint, hint ;). Bandi shared that our smartphones have many pieces in them mined from places which are unsafe. He also shared that the workers aren't properly paid and they often use child labour in order to get the goods. That broke my heart to hear that children are forced to do this and not even given a chance to learn or just be kids. One of the quotes from this video that really stood out to me was "what you hold in your hand leaves a bloody trail which all comes down to a boiled mineral (TEDx Talks, 2012)." Those words hold a lot of weight. I am sure that all of you, my readers, have a cell phone yet have never thought about how those who harvest the materials for them are treated. I would consider my cell phone to be an essential part of my life. 

    When I first got a cell phone at the age of 18, it's primary purpose was to have a way to contact my parents in case my car broke down. Now in 2021, it serves a much greater purpose. It helps me communicate with those around me. I am able to Facetime my friends and family right now that I can't see due to the ongoing pandemic. Never, have I ever, taken the time to think about the lives of those who help mine the materials used inside my phone or other technology that I have. When I purchased my brand new iPhone 8 two and a half years ago, I just thought about how expensive it was and how the phone company was charging me too much. Two weeks or so ago, I was discussing with my dad about how I wanted to get a new phone. My battery health is only at 85% right now and I really wanted to have portrait mode available for my camera. My sister recently updated her own phone and loves it. I have never been one to update my phone whenever the next version comes out however I would appreciate upgrading my battery. I could have had my battery replaced under warranty up to two years after I purchased it but it started failing after two years. This is my own opinion and I don't have proof to back it up however I think they purposely make the parts last for a certain amount of time to encourage you to buy a new phone. Anyways, back to my point, we often replace our phone for selfish reasons without thinking about whether or not we actually need it. I have done this in my past too. Additionally, the consumer doesn't advocate for fair trade phones. I would attribute this to the fact that the general public doesn't know where the materials in their phones come from. I was one of those people prior to this presentation. 

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    This presentation got me thinking about how much the general public hears about e waste, fair trade phones, and the ethical issues around smart phones. I decided to do quick google search to see what was available to the general public under the news section. I started by looking at e waste. I found this interesting article  entitled What do you do with an old cellphone? Company hopes to reduce Canada's e waste. The article shared that the public is often uneducated in the matter of recycling technology. Unfortunately, that doesn't shock me. If I continue to read down the list, I find more articles that discuss how e waste continues to grow and that the general public needs to learn more about how to recycle. I also put this search into youtube and will link a few informative videos at the end of this post. When I looked up fair trade phones, I didn't have a successful search. It came up with news articles about phones such as the newest LG phone, but nothing about fair trade phones. The last search I did also was unsuccessful. The only ethical issue that came up was around the covid-19 vaccine and yet again, there are more news articles about new smartphones. As a university student, I am lucky enough to have access to many data bases that I could use to find primary research on the subjects I just google searched. Not many people have access to this or even know about them. 

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    All this research brings a question to my mind. Why don't more people know about e waste and how are we going to educate the general public? It also reminds me of one of the questions that Reynold brought up in his talk. This question was "how do we ensure that our devices get properly recycled when the time comes?" ( Redekopp,  I wish that I had a simple answer to all of these questions or that I could go bibbidi bobbedi bo and just fix it all but we don't live in a perfect world. What I do know is that education is key when it comes to teaching anyone about anything. Reynold educated myself and my fellow colleagues when he did his presentation this past Monday. I know that I am not the only one in my class who was moved by the presentation and about how we can make a difference. We can go out into the world and share the message with our family and friends. We can use social media such as twitter or Instagram to share the news. We can have those conversations with our students during our upcoming student teaching placement and when we have our own classroom in the fall. All of the people we impact can go out and share the message with those who are important to them. As it goes out, the impact will become bigger and bigger and bigger. Maybe one of those people will be a public speaker like Bandi to get people thinking about their impact on the world. As educators, we have roles both inside and outside our classroom to share about ethical issues so that we can we can make a difference in our world. To end this blog post, I would like to encourage you all to consider not to upgrade your cell phone every time a new version comes out. Share something on a social media sight you have. Educate those around you. Consider buying fair trade items. Our world will be better for it.

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The Dark Side to E Recycling

    Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Concerns? I would love to hear from you. Let me know in the comments below. 

Sources

Redekopp, R. Why you should love your smartphone more! Presented on January 25th 2021 

TEDx Talks. (2012, April 30). Congo Calling: Bandi Mbubi at TEDxExeter. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuEp6ryS1s4