Growing up in the digital age: 11 demands

The new report «Growing up in the digital age» by the Federal Commission for Children and Youth Affairs (FCYA) looks at the impact of digitalisation on children and young people. In particular, it examines the question of what children and young people need to learn in order to have good opportunities in the living and working world of tomorrow - and how digitalisation affects equal opportunities.
The report includes specialist articles, our own research, discussions from the Co-Creation Day in June 2017 and expert interviews. It concludes with 11 demands from the FCYI on digitalisation, which are aimed at politics, business, education, science and society.
The detailed report with all expert contributions can be ordered or downloaded online as a PDF.

Demand 1: Children and young people should be at the centre of the discussion and help shape the digital world

Children and young people should be more at the centre of discussions about future framework conditions and decisions relating to the digital transformation. Not only economic or technological considerations should play a role. The focus should be on ensuring that every child can develop their personality, talents and abilities, as required by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Children and young people should have a say in digitalisation and be able to help shape the digital world. This ranges from the debate on whether smartphones should be allowed in schools to rules on the use of technical devices at home and the strategy for a digital Switzerland.

Requirement 2: Digitalisation should support the equal opportunities and resource-oriented promotion of adolescents

The new technical possibilities open up great potential for individualised forms of learning and teaching. This makes it easier to cater to the needs of the individual. This potential must be optimally utilised when dealing with diversity in order to support the equal opportunities development of children and young people. Individualised and resource-oriented support is needed. All children and young people should learn basic digital skills at an early age and be motivated to use media actively and creatively .

Requirement 3: Technical competences and soft skills must be promoted equally

Skills in dealing with information and communication technologies must be promoted with regard to the digital transformation. It is undisputed that children and young people need to acquire advanced basic technical knowledge (especially «computational thinking»). However, specific specialised knowledge quickly becomes outdated and there is a lack of networked application. This makes it all the more important to create a solid foundation in the basic subjects of maths andlanguage. This is because they are the key to acquiring new specialised knowledge and structured, networked thinking. At the same time as technical skills, social and personal skills, critical thinking and creativity are becoming increasingly important with the digital transformation. For this reason, soft skills should be promoted in the education of children and young people on an equal footing with technical skills.

Demand 4: Children and young people need free, unplanned time

Children and young people need free and self-determined time in their everyday (school) lives. After all, social and personal skills, critical thinking and creativity, which are becoming increasingly important with digitalisation, are skills that require sufficient freedom to develop in a playful and pressure-free way. This requires a social awareness of the importance of free and self-determined time for children and young people. In family and leisure time, school and education, free space (in terms of time and space) is important so that children and young people can discover their creativity and take on personal responsibility .

Requirement 5: The willingness of children and young people to learn should be supported.

The digital transformation brings with it constant and rapid change. This requires continuous learning from everyone involved, both in everyday life (e-banking, smart home systems, for example) and at work. Children have a natural love of learning. This is a key prerequisite for continuing to learn throughout their lives. It is therefore important that school and education support the joy of learning and encourage the willingness to change. If children and young people can motivate themselves to learn, have a positive attitude towards change and are guided by their interests and abilities, they have good prospects.

Requirement 6: Parents and carers should encourage critical thinking and be reflective role models in media use

The flood of information is constantly growing and requires a critical and reflective approach to the media. Parents and carers should increasingly support young people in developing their critical thinking by accompanying them and being aware of their role model function with regard to media use and values. In reality, being a good role model is a challenging task. It is important to empower educators and carers to guide children and young people. Specialists must be systematically trained for this purpose, and carers must be specifically informed and supported. The range of counselling and support services on media use must be further expanded for this purpose, including for early childhood, and it must take into account the heterogeneity of those responsible for raising children.

Demand 7: The early childhood sector must be taken into account in media education

Children are born into a digital world. Media education must be recognised as a natural part of early childhood education so that they learn to orientate themselves in an environment shaped by media. Media are just as much educational material as building blocks and pencils and must be made available for educational work at the appropriate level. In order to establish successful media education from the outset, media education should also be a mandatory part of the training of all professionals in the early childhood sector. Ongoing further training and the appropriate technical equipment, including support, are also required.

Requirement 8: Extracurricular work with children and young people should promote social and personal skills as well as media skills

Social and personal skills are increasingly acquired outside of school (or in the workplace). This is why extracurricular child and youth work has an important function that has not been given enough focus and resources to date. It offers space to develop social and personal skills, allows children and young people to participate in the development of programmes, and gives them a say and participation. These are important areas of learning, especially with regard to the digital transformation.
Thanks to low-threshold access, extracurricular child and youth work reaches a wide range of different adolescents. There is a great opportunity to enable these young people to engage with the topic of digitalisation and to use digital media actively, participatively and creatively. The promotion of media skills should therefore also increasingly be a goal of extracurricular child and youth work (e.g. open and association-based child and youth work, residential child and youth services). This requires specific training and further education as well as sensitisation of professionals and financial resources.

Demand 9: A digital school culture is needed

The new curricula are currently bringing great dynamism to the development of media education and IT in schools. If schools want to master the challenges of the digital transformation, this momentum must be maintained. It is not enough to integrate individual new content from the field of information and communication technology (ICT) into the curriculum; schools must take steps towards their digital transformation as a whole.
This requires a new school culture that does not teach technical skills in isolation in one school subject, but sees them as cross-cutting skills that characterise everyday school life at all school levels. It is also crucial that compulsory schooling can establish a culture of lifelong learning that instils a positive attitude towards change in young people and encourages their natural curiosity. This requires solid training and continuous professional development for teachers in the field of media and IT and the necessary resources, teaching materials for all levels and a modern school infrastructure with support, without compromising the health of learners and teachers (keyword: room ventilation or radiation exposure).

Requirement 10: The permeability of the education system and networking with the world of work should be strengthened

An education system that is accessible and affordable for all is key to connecting with the digital future. With its dual vocational education and training system, Switzerland is fundamentally well positioned for future developments. The permeability of the education system is particularly important. It should be possible to continue with higher education or switch to a different training programme at any time, as it is important to be able to reorient oneself as required in times of rapid technological change. A training, retraining and further education landscape that is capable of development is therefore an important framework condition that must be jointly supported and further expanded by the education system and the economy. The education system must also be flexible in order to be able to adapt to social developments in a timely manner. In vocational education and training in particular, the adaptation of training programmes and the integration of new skills into the curricula must take place more quickly. This requires intensive cooperation between stakeholders in the education system and the world of work.

Requirement 11: In-depth reflection is needed on how to deal with constant availability

Dealing with permanent accessibility («always on») requires in-depth reflection on two levels:

• A conscious and reflective approach is needed in everyday private (family) life, at work, at school and in training. To this end, parents and guardians are just as much called upon as companies to reflect on their own behaviour and the requirements for employees and to create a new, conscious culture in dealing with constant accessibility that meets the needs of the individual and the collective. Rules on the use of smartphones, tablets, etc. at school and in the family should be developed together with the adolescents. In principle, empowering young people is more effective than banning them. Companies and organisations should also reflect on this and create a framework that allows employees to decide freely when they can and cannot be reached. Society, business and politics are called upon to find practicable solutions together.
• However, the topic also needs to be explored in greater depth at a theoretical level. There is still hardly any scientific basis on the handling and effects of «always on». There is a general need for research here.

Outlook:

As digitalisation increasingly permeates society, all stakeholders must deal with it in one form or another. The demands of the EKKJ provide a framework for this. However, there are hardly any universal recipes. Rather, specific and mutually compatible solutions are required, which usually have to be negotiated together. Everyone must further concretise what changes and measures digital developments require for their own area of responsibility.
For example:

• jede/r Erziehungsverantwortliche fragen, ob den Heranwachsenden genügend Freiraum für die Entwicklung von Kreativität, Sozial- und Selbstkompetenzen zur Verfügung steht, und wie er/sie den Alltag mit Heranwachsenden im Umgang mit der permanenten Erreichbarkeit gemeinsam aushandeln und gestalten will.
• jede Schule, jede Lehrperson fragen, wie sie die Kinder und Jugendlichen
  in die Diskussion um digitale Medien einbeziehen und eine digitale
  Schulkultur etablieren kann.
• die ausserschulische Kinder- und Jugendarbeit fragen, wie sie vermehrt
  Kinder und Jugendliche an das Thema Digitalisierung heranführen kann.

More articles on youth and media:

• In our large online dossier on media use you will find numerous exciting articles on the topic of young people and media