"We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them." Epictetus
I was listening to and reflecting on Epictetus's Enchiridion the other night, and the above idea struck me. In the shifting terrain of higher education, this ancient Stoic insight has never felt more relevant. As educators, we are expected to adapt rapidly, from digital transformation to evolving student expectations and the rising tide of misinformation. Yet amidst all this complexity, Epictetus offers a grounding principle: focus on what we can control. This principle underpins the growing need for digital resilience in education, where students must learn not only to process the flood of information, but also to manage their responses to it.
The Information Age and Its Discontents
We are surrounded by an overabundance of information. According to Pinto and Leite (2020), the integration of digital technologies into higher education has expanded access and engagement but also introduced new challenges related to information quality and overload. Managing information overload is now an unavoidable part of the academic experience and a core challenge for building digital resilience in education. Students are caught in an endless stream of feeds, alerts and updates, expected to interpret, evaluate and respond at speed. This challenge is examined further in Australian Digital Information Literacy: Tackling Misinformation in Society.
The consequences are increasingly well documented. Researchers have found that continuous connectivity contributes to stress, cognitive overload and decision fatigue, particularly among younger adults (Jaimes Delgado et al., 2022). In short, students may be more connected, but they are not necessarily more empowered. Many are overwhelmed, distracted and unsure about what to believe, or more crucially, how to process it all. Teaching emotional regulation and equipping students with tools to manage digital pressure is fast becoming an essential part of modern pedagogy.
What can we offer them? Certainly not more information.
Instead, we need to help them build the psychological and intellectual infrastructure to manage the information that already surrounds them. This is where the Stoic distinction between what is within our control and what is not becomes critical. It is also where the concept of digital resilience in education begins to take root as more than just a buzzword - it becomes a core learning outcome.
Control, Response and Resilience
Stoicism, at its core, is a philosophy of agency. It teaches that while we cannot control external events, we can control our reactions to them. In the digital context, this means accepting that we cannot filter every news feed, silence every troll or correct every piece of false information. But we can teach students how to pause, evaluate and respond with reason and self-awareness.
The best thing for students in a world flooded with anxiety-inducing information is not more content or noise. It is learning to accept the things they cannot change (and not let it get to them), the courage to change the things they can, and the wisdom to know the difference. That is not just a philosophical ideal. It is a practical survival skill in the digital age, and it sits at the heart of building student resilience and advancing digital resilience in education.
This aligns with what educators are increasingly describing as digital resilience. In a study spanning Australia and Asia, Eri et al. (2021) found that students who had the skills to self-regulate and maintain perspective during COVID-19 disruptions coped more effectively with digital learning pressures. The ability to withstand the psychological strain of continuous online engagement, and to recover from failures or misinformation, is now fundamental, not optional.
But we need to go further. Resilience is not simply about bouncing back. It is about standing firm. It is about cultivating an internal compass strong enough to hold its bearing amidst cultural, technological and epistemological storms.
Teaching for Digital Resilience in Education
So how can we, in practical terms, bring Stoic insights and strategies for digital resilience in education into our classrooms?
We start by shifting focus from content to capacity. Rather than overloading students with facts, we help them develop the skills and mindset to critically engage with what they encounter. In this respect, critical thinking skills development becomes more than a generic academic goal - see Critical Thinking Skills in Academic Libraries for practical examples in first-year education. It becomes a way to strengthen mental clarity, boost confidence in decision-making and build intellectual self-defence against misinformation.
Information literacy in higher education also needs to evolve. No longer is it sufficient to teach basic source evaluation. Students need to understand context, power, bias and intent behind the information they consume. Information literacy must be reframed not just as a technical skill, but as a practice of discernment, patience and moral clarity (Pinto & Leite, 2020). It is deeply tied to the emotional and cognitive aspects of teaching emotional regulation in a media-saturated environment.
We must also model emotional steadiness in our own practice. The educator who can sit with complexity without rushing to certainty, who can acknowledge ambiguity without collapsing into cynicism, is doing more than teaching content. They are demonstrating what it looks like to embody Stoic philosophy in modern education—to respond with agency, presence and clarity.
And just as Stoicism promotes phronesis (practical wisdom), we must guide students in developing not just knowledge, but judgment. This means helping them learn how to evaluate sources, weigh competing claims, manage emotional responses and understand the limits of their own knowledge (Davis, 2024).
A Stoic Ethic for the 21st Century Learner
There is something powerfully countercultural in telling students that they do not need to react to everything. That they do not need to win every argument online. That their dignity is not tied to the number of likes, retweets or follows they receive. That they can choose how they engage.
This is the foundation of building student digital resilience in education, shaping learners who are both intellectually capable and emotionally grounded. It is also central to the future of digital resilience in education, where survival depends not on speed or volume of information consumed, but on clarity of thought and strength of self.
In other words, we are not simply preparing students for jobs or exams. We are helping them become thoughtful, resilient citizens in an unpredictable world (see Navigating Leadership for more on leading wisely). That is what a truly future-facing education looks like.
In the end, Epictetus was right. We cannot choose our external circumstances. But we can teach students, and remind ourselves, how to respond. And in that response lies not only resilience but freedom.
