Calibrating Moral Judgment in Digital Environments: Toward an Islamic Digital Moral Calibration Theory
Keywords:
islamic digital moral calibration theory, digital moral discernment, moral development, islamic moral education, parental mediation, digital literacyAbstract
The growing complexity of digital environments requires Muslim children to make contextual moral judgments that cannot be addressed through explicit religious rules alone. Although previous research has advanced understanding of moral cognition, digital literacy, parental mediation, and Islamic education, these perspectives remain fragmented in explaining how children develop autonomous digital moral discernment in morally ambiguous situations. This conceptual paper addresses this theoretical gap by proposing Islamic Digital Moral Calibration Theory (IDMCT), a middle-range theory explaining how Islamic moral referents are progressively integrated into contextual digital judgment. Drawing on Social Domain Theory, Social Cognitive Theory, and Meta-Moral Cognition, the paper develops an integrative framework in which guided value–content comparison, meta-moral reflection, and digital moral threshold calibration recursively cultivate autonomous digital moral discernment. The proposed theory contributes to moral development research by introducing digital moral threshold calibration as a novel explanatory mechanism, differentiates moral from epistemic discernment within digital literacy research, and reconceptualizes parental mediation and Islamic education as developmental scaffolds for independent moral judgment. The paper concludes by outlining implications for future empirical validation and theory development across diverse digital and educational contexts.
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