Digital empowerment and participation: What works?

Cultural and social obstacles to equitable access and inclusion and to the development of basic digital literacy skills are equally difficult to overcome, and are not always directly related to the socio-economic status of families. Today we are seeing quite another form of digital divide, with technology-rich children at risk through poorly supervised and/or excessive access to technology, often in very early childhood, to the detriment of age-appropriate social and physical pursuits. This can result in young children skipping developmental stages in early childhood, thereby incurring a long-lasting impact on their educational potential.

A balance between on- and offline activities is important for children and people of all ages, for the development of empathy, observation and listening skills, and cooperation strategies, which are all key competencies in digital citizenship. Knowledge and critical understanding of oneself, too, is a stepping stone to becoming an active citizen, and today includes knowing when and how to use or not use technology, as well as understanding the impact and reach of our actions and words in the digital space.

The digital world and digital tools can enable youth participation by providing:

• An information channel through which young people can access information that supports their participation. For example, news sources, information about political debates and details of policy making.

• A communication channel through which young people can communicate with each other, and other people relevant to youth participation, such as decision makers.

• A platform to create, share and distribute content. For instance, to recruit new project participants, or to distribute a campaign message, to sign petitions, to do crowdfunding and fundraising, etc.

• A virtual space in which youth participation activities can take place and where virtual communities can form.

Nearly all forms of youth participation can be recreated in a digital format in some way. For example, youth council meetings or youth conferences can be hosted through video chat, or protests can be organised and held through hashtags and social media posts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many youth participation projects transferred their activities exclusively to digital formats. The digital world also gives the potential to create new methods of participation which could not be implemented in the physical world. Without physical barriers and limits, it becomes possible to do things like involving very large numbers of people or hosting interactions with people in multiple places across the world simultaneously. More commonly though youth participation initiatives are now regularly combining face to face and digital interactions together in a blended approach.

Empowerment of individuals and communities means increased control over life and coping skills. With information technology, people gain new abilities and ways to participate and express themselves in a networked society. This can be called digital empowerment, which is not a direct consequence of having and using the technical facilities, but a multi-phased process to gain better networking, communication, and cooperation opportunities, and to increase the competence of individuals and communities to act as influential participants in the information society. Empowerment can be seen as a sense of enablement—enabling people to do what is important to them, and enabling young people to grow as competent subjects who have control over their lives and surroundings. When added to policies and programmes, this approach could bridge some of the democratic, cultural, and content divides by bringing in more aspects..