'Is Children's Digital Citizenship a Digital Straitjacket?'

Abstract

There has been some recent discussion in Australia and the UK about the need to better prepare children as 'digital citizens'. Much of this narrative speaks of children's rights, children's resilience and children being empowered - but empowered to do what? This paper casts a critical eye over some of this discussion and questions whether it places too much emphasis on what is 'appropriate' and 'inappropriate' in digital spaces and casts discussions of children's rights far too much around those notions. In the result it asks whether digital citizenship is just another term for 'well informed digital consumer' consistent with the general demise of real citizenship, and in effect preparing children for an adult world dominated by powerful technology corporations.