Commentary: Mobile Guardian hack is a reminder digital natives can still lack digital literacy

SINGAPORE: The nightmare of losing access to learning apps, schoolwork and notes before an important examination became reality for 13,000 secondary students in August, when Mobile Guardian suffered a global cybersecurity breach just days before some of them were due to take their O-Level preliminary exams and about two months before the national exams.
About one in six of them lost some data while less than 5 per cent lost all their data, according to Minister for Education Chan Chun Sing on Sep 10 in parliament.
This incident with the device management app has sparked concerns, in particular, about our growing dependence on technology in education. Some online reactions included calling for a return to more traditional methods.
Yet, we do not see the same reaction in other sectors when technology fails.
The CrowdStrike outage in July is a clear example: A single faulty software update disrupted computer systems all over the world. Suddenly, thousands of flights were grounded, leaving many passengers stranded. Banks, retailers and many other workplaces came to a standstill when computers flashed the “blue screen of death”.
The public response, however, was not to abandon technology and return to paper-based methods. Instead, the focus was on seeking out root causes – be it poor system design, organisational flaws, or inadequate policies – and improve these systems to become more resilient to failures in the future.
So why is it that when it comes to education, we are quick to question our dependence on technology?
At the heart of this debate seems to be a fear of losing essential skills.
Critics argue that overreliance on technology is eroding our most fundamental abilities, like how Google Maps and GPS have since led to a decline in our navigational abilities. The Mobile Guardian breach reinforces this view – the breach disrupted students’ ability to continue their studies as they normally would.
These critics may have a point. However, the real issue is not a dependence on technology. Instead, it is about our failure to equip students with skills to handle technological disruptions that are inevitable in today’s world.
Businesses and governments have established protocols for operational continuity in the event of a disruption. They have organisation-wide policies to teach and ensure good digital hygiene practices, such as backup strategies, data management and cybersecurity.
In contrast, students rarely receive such training. When systems fail, they are left vulnerable and unsure of what to do.
The scope of digital literacy can be expanded to include such practices and skills, so that students are better equipped to cope with technological failures when they occur. Yet, this is merely addressing the symptom.
There is a deeper, more fundamental issue to be addressed, and this requires a rethink of digital literacy education.
Young people today are often called “digital natives”, simply because they use smartphones extensively. Yet, in the past six years, I have had to teach undergraduates digital literacy skills.
I have encountered students struggling with basic tasks on computers. Some still type slowly using only their index fingers; some struggle to format paragraphs in Microsoft Word; others are unaware they can maximise windows on their screens to edit documents comfortably. They are not the majority, but they are many.
These gaps reveal the flawed assumption that extensive smartphone use leads to digital savviness.
It is a mistake to think that every student can pick up digital skills by themselves if we leave them to their devices. It does not automatically translate to a productive mastery in using these tools.
Moreover, technical skills are often conflated with soft skills. Teaching a student to use note-taking tools does not necessarily mean that they will learn to take notes effectively. Students who learnt such tools have shared with me how they still struggle to manage the volume of information at university.
If our goal is to empower students to use technology effectively, we must focus on cultivating the kinds of soft skills that complement these digital tools. Consider these two scenarios – who is more empowered in using the tool?
In the first scenario, the student is constrained by the tool, while in the second scenario, the student is empowered to use the tool creatively, in the direction he sees fit.
Too often, students follow the first scenario because they lack the relevant soft skills needed to think beyond the rigid frameworks presented by the template or by the tools they use. Had they been exposed to other skills like storytelling, drama, or even rhetoric, they might have the necessary resources to think beyond the confines of the tool.
The solution to technological failures in education is not to scale back our reliance on technology, but to use it more thoughtfully.
If students do not feel empowered by the digital tools given to them, then it is our responsibility as educators and as parents to equip them with the necessary technical and soft skills, so that they are able to gain a sense of autonomy to direct their use of digital tools.
More importantly, we need to rethink our approach to digital literacy in a way that prioritises soft skills alongside technical know-how. And we must not let discomfort with new technologies blind us from the bigger picture.
The cybersecurity breach was a crisis, but it is also an opportunity to reshape how we think about technology in education – not as a crutch, but as a powerful empowering force that can unlock the full potential of every student.
Jonathan Sim is Assistant Director (Pedagogy), NUS AI Centre for Educational Technologies; Fellow, NUS Teaching Academy; and Lecturer, Department of Philosophy, National University of Singapore.