Digital citizenship behavior among college students during the COVID-19 pandemic

Digital citizenship behavior is the appropriate behavior when engaging with digital technology ethically, responsibly, and safely by individuals. This study intends to investigate college students' digital citizenship behavior based on background variables during the COVID-19 pandemic in Tamil Nadu among the college students who chose different programs from diploma to doctoral degree level. The digital citizenship questionnaire was used to collect data on the digital citizenship behavior of college students (Nordin et al. 2016). With the help of convenience sampling techniques, 304 online survey responses were obtained. The data was examined using percentages, mean, standard deviation, t-tests, and F-tests, and at 5% significance for table values, the hypotheses were tested. Findings show that college students in Tamil Nadu have a moderately high level of digital citizenship. Gender, marital status, mode of study, type of college, and internet use hours significantly affect digital citizenship behavior. In contrast, location, age group, level of study program, and nature of college do not significantly affect the digital citizenship behavior of the college students.