A critical reflection on the OECD Report's results through a dialogue with Carlos González-Sancho

The fundamental question in the face of exposing the little ones to technology is: how much or how?

First, the question of how much children should be exposed to digital technologies encapsulates an inherent and overarching provocation.

González-Sancho advocates a fundamental shift from "how much" to "how," opening up innovative thinking focused on quality. Within this conceptual framework, it is crucial to consider and concretely address three key issues that have a strong impact on today's digital society: the first concerns the protection factor, stating that children "must be better protected in the digital environment." This goal involves promoting the safe, controlled, and responsible use of technology. This is a challenging and complex task, revealing the emerging problem of incompleteness and inherent conflicts in the guidelines for ECEC professionals, as reflected in the ongoing debate between technology advocates and opposing positions. The second crucial point refers to the digital divide, manifested as a dual criticality: on one side, it appears as a gap in access to digital technologies, creating disparities in the opportunity to connect and benefit from online resources; on the other, it translates into a separation in the proficiency of using these tools, accentuating socioeconomic differences. Addressing this bidimensionality is essential to promoting fair and inclusive accessibility to digital resources. Finally, the third focus revolves around ECEC professionals, who play an indispensable role in the care of the 0–6 age group and, more broadly, in the current digitised context in terms of policy-making and mediation. Specifically, there is a need for professional training focused on best practises in the use of technology, ensuring service quality, facilitating family engagement, harnessing the potential of digital tools, and fostering awareness and responsibility to guide the child-technology relationship educationally rather than evasively.

The educational focus is called to shift the teleological center, aiming to prepare children and direct technology toward an ethical-pedagogical governance where digital tools emerge as empowering and improving means. In conceptual continuity, González-Sancho proposes a eloquent analogy with the sphere of physical health to better understand how to address technological risks: 

to avoid injuries and accidents, is it perhaps best to deny children outdoor activities or experiences? 

The same perspective applies to the relationship with digital devices: 

to avoid the inherent dangers of technology, is it perhaps a solution to avoid the problem rather than educate an agentic preparation capable of increasingly consciously facing the complexity of the digital age?

It is evident that educational quality becomes the fulcrum of the relationship with technology: on one hand, in terms of content quality, which must meet criteria of appropriateness, interactivity, balanced exposure times, and genuine educational value for the child's development and learning; on the other hand, quality must be manifested in ethical discussions, placing fundamental rights such as privacy, safety, autonomy, and the possibility of growth and development to explore the environment at the forefront. These rights, to be respected, unequivocally call for responsible and conscious guidance from adult figures, both parental and professional.

In the perspective of best practices in the use of digital devices, a deep understanding of the advantages and risks inherent in technologies is therefore necessary.

Regarding the former, González-Sancho emphasizes that the integration of technology in early childhood care sectors still lacks significant evidence, but some countries have implemented positive experiences at various levels of education. For example, the use of technological tools to assess child development, enhance learning through increased engagement (including playful activities), and facilitate school-family communication. On the risks side, ethical issues arise, taking into account the vulnerability of children and the consequent demand for educational agency from professionals and parents: foremost among them is the significant theme of privacy, with related issues such as tracking, profiling, and massive data extraction. Other concerns converge on children's access to inappropriate content and the potential distracting-destructive risk of technology when used without responsible, careful, and supportive guidance.

How to mitigate these risks?

The answer contained in the Report and highlighted by González-Sancho can be summarized in two key concepts that, in line with the educational purpose of the DataChildMap project, recall the indispensable role of educational figures: guidance and training.

To maintain the centrality of the child's autonomy, rights, and freedom, an indispensable welfare shift is needed to provide educators and parents with thoughtful training paths, cultivating essential skills to become genuinely educational guides capable of ensuring a safe digital environment. This training, structurally, must also preserve an open and community-oriented dimension, not solely based on individual motivation and interests within particularistic contexts. It is a fundamental consideration that refers to the ontological universality of rights, for everyone and each one, allowing for an ethical-qualitative rethinking in the current digital era where educational figures play a fundamental and non-delegable role.

Maria Valentini