Character Education in the Digital era

Education is very important for a person’s growth. Education is used to improve one’s knowledge, skills, and habits through teaching, training, or research. The purpose of education itself is to create quality and characterful human resources so that they can have a comprehensive view of the world and its development.

One of the goals of education is to mold human resources with character. It means character about character, essence, behavior, and the individual’s personality. Character education, then, is teaching conducted to emphasize the values ​​that shape personality. In other words, it teaches individuals thinking skills and habits in the form of behavior, character, or traits that make high-quality individuals.

The digital age is characterized by the increasing speed of technological knowledge rotation. The increasing capabilities of technology and the internet pose challenges to the community and even the world of education. In education, students can easily connect with teachers through Zoom media even if they are in different locations and far from each other. So technology can solve the problem of distance geography education.

Some several problems or obstacles arise in this digital age, namely:

1. Teachers’ lack of reaction to technological developments

In the educational world, the teacher’s response to technological developments is also an issue. Several factors influence teachers’ unpreparedness for the digital age. According to research, teachers over the age of 50 are less trained in digital learning, so it takes a lot of effort to learn it. Teachers in their 40s are somewhat familiar with digital tools, making it easier to adapt to developments in digital learning. Now even teachers in their thirties can easily and seamlessly conduct digital learning.

2. Difficulty practicing the norms or values ​​of social life in a virtual environment

Digital character development promotes the development of skills such as communication skills, cooperation, and socialization and increases individual performance and motivation. If digital developments facilitate distance learning, which only takes place via zoom media, then there is a negative side. Where socialization is a problem that is often faced because students are generally expected to learn how to work with others and practice the norms and values ​​learned at school to live in society.

But in digital learning, students do not practice learning norms and values ​​in social life because of the virtual learning environment. The virtual environment also affects friendship, with the virtual environment causing individuals to have fewer friends and less contact with other people. On the other hand, digital character learning also creates little opportunity to empathize with others.

3. Weak individual characters in the face of the digital age

In this digital age, character-building is very important for every individual. Sophisticated and lightning-fast technology is of course a temptation. If the individual does not have a strong character, technological developments will create a dilemma and have negative effects. The development of time will also affect an individual’s personality and emotions. So character building is necessary to be able to shape the character of someone who can be choosy about accepting any change.

4. Frequent cyberbullying and copyright infringement

Technological innovations are advancing very quickly, making digital and internet problems uncontrollable. Another problem of technological development is cyberbullying and copyright infringement. Cyberbullying is bullying using digital technology. Character education teaches us how to empathize, control ourselves, where think before we act, respect others, be tolerant, and how to treat others well, and behave fairly.

Personality building in this digital copy of Copyright Infringement teaches individuals to respect and value the work of others, such as B. Respecting other people’s writings, books, music, and other works of art. Do not use the ideas, words, writings, or works of others as if they were your own. Acts of respect for the work of others are a form of copyright infringement. So appreciate and respect the work of others.

5. Information Overdose

Information overload is also not good. The effects of information overload affect a person’s ability to digest information. In this fast-moving digital age, all information that reaches us has no filter. But the filter comes from ourselves, where we have to be more selective about what information is good and what is unknown. So, with character building, we can reduce or even prevent an information overdose. Negative information that we can prevent is dirty, rude, and unwise comments.

Character education in the digital age is also necessary to mold individuals who respect others, become fair individuals and do not discriminate and compare others. If someone is considered to have character, then they have the confidence to be reliable.

You can say that digital development is growing so fast. Within a few hours and even seconds, new information will be able to enter. If we don’t have a fortress in the form of character education, we may find it difficult to limit ourselves to gathering information. Since not all information that comes to us is positive, negative effects also affect us. So character education will be a bulwark to not digging deeper into information that may be negative.

Character building will also be a stronghold for individuals to face digital developments wisely and intelligently. Because when we look at it, there are still many people, especially young children, who experience errors in grasping information.

If children are introduced to character education from an early age, they will find it easier to recognize their identity and their nationalistic spirit will be strengthened. Where children know better what information is acceptable and what is not.

From this, it can be concluded that character education serves to strengthen or refrain from information that is negative for us. Be a wise user in this digital age. Take advantage of digital technology as much as possible and put it to good use so that it can have a good impact on us in the future.