How Emotional Intelligence Makes Students Better Digital Citizens

Technology connects us in ways that were unimaginable just a generation ago. Students today navigate friendships, learning, and self-expression in both physical and digital spaces. The good news is that the skills they need to thrive in both worlds overlap. When educators combine emotional intelligence and digital citizenship, students gain confidence and self-awareness to make thoughtful choices online, build meaningful relationships both online and offline, and show up as their best selves.

According to Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, emotional intelligence is the ability to navigate our own and others’ emotions to achieve meaningful goals. It involves the skills of recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotions – known as the RULER skills.

RULER is the acronym that stands for:

• Recognizing emotions in oneself and others

• Understanding the causes and consequences of emotions

• Labeling emotions with a nuanced vocabulary

• Expressing emotions in accordance with cultural norms and social context

• Regulating emotions with helpful strategies

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) defines the Digital Citizenship (DigCit) Competencies as balanced, informed, inclusive, engaged, and alert. Lessons about digital citizenship are widely taught in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms to help students successfully navigate the digital world.

How Can Students Use Emotional Intelligence to Become Better Digital Citizens?

When students develop emotional intelligence alongside digital citizenship skills, they gain something greater than the sum of its parts — the ability to pause, reflect, and respond thoughtfully in any online situation.

The five ISTE competencies come alive when students can recognize what they're feeling, understand why, and choose how to act on it. Here's how the RULER skills map to each competency in practice.

1. Balanced

Making informed decisions about how to prioritize time and activities online and off.

This means:

• Being aware of how we feel throughout the day during online and offline activities, finding a precise word to label each feeling, and then prioritizing our time to experience more of the emotions we want to feel.

• Choosing from an array of strategies to manage the feelings associated with using or abstaining from online activities.

2. Informed

Evaluating the accuracy, perspective, and validity of digital media and social posts.

• Considering how content creators use information to get an emotional impact and how that may affect our ability to evaluate what is created and shared.

• Managing the emotions we experience in response to digital and social media so that we can be as objective as possible in our evaluations of information.

3. Inclusive

Being open to hearing and respectfully recognizing multiple viewpoints and engaging with others online with respect and empathy.

• Noticing and labeling our feelings when we interact online with those who have differing viewpoints. Consider whether our emotions are interfering with being open to other perspectives.

• Thinking about which emotions are most helpful when considering others’ opinions and expressing our own. Reducing the physical and mental effects of unhelpful emotions and increasing the effects of helpful emotions before posting or responding to others’ posts.

4. Engaged

Using technology and digital channels for civic engagement, to solve problems, and be a force for good in both physical and virtual communities.

• Considering how our actions within our community may help others to feel more of how they want to feel and less of how they do not. Thinking carefully about the way in which we express emotions when communicating online. Remembering that the same words can feel different depending on capitalization, punctuation, emojis, and even where and when they are posted.

5. Alert

Being aware of our online actions and knowing how to be safe and create safe spaces for others online.

• Noticing how our online actions impact how others feel, including how safe they feel. Pay attention when something online makes us feel uncomfortable or unsafe.

• Considering how we can create safe spaces for others. Expressing emotions in a thoughtful way, considering how others may be impacted. Pausing and regulating our emotions before reposting or responding.

Bring these skills into your classroom and empower your students to become better digital citizens.