We often think, that our children are safe in the best possible ways only at home and nowhere else. Every other place for our child has some degree and element of risk and danger involved in it for them. Be it their crèche, maternal or paternal home, school, montessori or any other place.
The new age child born in the smartphone era is not alienated from the impact of the digital world.
Is this a good or not so good of a sign?
Let’s look further, as we dig deeper into how the future should look like for our kids if we just practise a little bit of caution and make ourselves aware of a few strategies of digital literacy that can come handy for our children as well as us.
It is high time that such conversations need to start coming to surface, and one such discussion took place at an ICSSR sponsored conference on 10th March, 2025 under the Times School of Media at Bennett University (The Times Group), where one of the keynote speakers, Dr. Lisa Kervin, Professor, School of Education, University of Wollongong, spoke at length and shed light upon certain realms.
For instance, before trying to make our children digitally literate, we must first and foremost inculcate those literary skills inside of ourselves. After we have learnt the ethics, morals and proper ways of using the digital landscape, then we must opt to impart that education to our younger ones.
She vividly discussed that, in the digital arena, we see how written information is being navigated through illustrations. Needless to explicitly mention, that children are empowered through critical thinking and reliability. Hence, digital tools can come handy in this process when it fosters teamwork for children and creates cultural connections.
We must start making our children equipped with the forms and techniques of digital literacy since a very young age till they reach their adolescence. Aligning the childhood digital literacy with goal 10, goal 4 and goal 14 of SDGs, will help them become globally empowered citizens in future.
She gave 3 basic recommendations in this regard, such as,
- Children have right to digital inclusion.
- Effective digital literacy practices are essential for children to actively participate.
- Adults play key roles in developing, children`s digital literacy practices.
When enquired about the digital restrictions prevalent in Australia, age gating below 16 years and the field report regarding the same, Dr. Kervin, elucidated upon this fact and said that the safety of children is the 1st priority. She emphasized, that the argument which states that children must be allowed to access a certain type of content over the internet, only after 16, should be eliminated in a way that such conversations should be happening early on and children must be taught on the correct usage of the digital space after a certain age. According to her, if that is the scenario, then such bans would not be required in future and hence not very highly recommended, presently.
Indeed, since Independence, India has adopted from the West, in terms of their social, economic, legal, political and administrative policies. Now, we are at a juncture, where following the footsteps of Australia, we can see whether we need to also incorporate digital age gating restrictions for children below 16 years of age, or whether we can follow Dr. Kervin’s advice and start sowing the seed of digital literacy in the minds and hearts of our children since the dawn of their early growing time, or is it already too late for that, since an entire generation has moved on, without stepping upon those stones of digital education.
Sometimes, by teaching others, we ourselves have a different set of learning, and who knows, one day our children can start teaching us based on what we taught them years ago.
Isn’t that what we call as sustainable education?
Where the baton can be passed on from one generation to another.