Digital media in 0-6: educational design between services and families

Abstract

Digital environments, particularly touchscreen media, increasingly characterize children’s everyday experiences, with children under three accessing apps, videos, and interactive content, especially in family settings. This creates an ‘educational paradox’: parents alarmed by ‘moral panic’ about digital media oppose tablets in educational contexts while using them in daily life with little critical-creative thinking – essentially as ‘shut-up toys.’ Moreover, connectivity in Italy has developed unevenly with significant regional differences, revealing a complex landscape of access and literacy inequalities across the country, particularly highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This article examines how early childhood educational services play a central role in developing digital culture for children as a literacy right, through their capacity to mediate and familiarize children with complex and creative uses of technological tools in dialogue with other play, reading, and learning materials, and to guide families navigating contradictory approaches, from prohibitionism to uncritical acceptance. Based on research, including the “Tabletti@mo in 0-6” project, we propose guidelines for selecting appropriate apps and promoting positive touchscreen interactions to support educational mediation that centers children’s rights and expressive capacities. We move beyond binary positions to recognize that traditional and digital tools need not be antagonistic.