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Inva Malaj : 8 December 2025 09:23
According to Eurostat, in 2023 only 55% of European Union citizens aged 16 to 74 had at least basic digital skills, with strong differences between countries: values ranging from around 83% in the Netherlands to around 28% in Romania.
This means that nearly half of the European adult population lacks the basic tools to navigate online. While children and young people grow up immersed in complex digital ecosystems, many of the adults responsible for their education—parents, teachers, and educational institutions—still struggle to understand the language, logic, and risks of digital technology, and therefore are unable to truly guide them.
A systematic review published in 2025 in Frontiers in Education analyzed over twenty studies on digital professional development, showing that many teacher training programs focus primarily on technical aspects (how to use a platform or tool) and much less on how to integrate digital technology into teaching in a critical and meaningful way. The result is that the use of technology in the classroom often merely replaces textbooks or the blackboard, without truly transforming teaching methods or developing students’ digital citizenship skills.
For schools with a high percentage of disadvantaged students, the problem is even more serious: teachers in these settings, who need support the most, often have less access to structured, high-quality digital professional development programs. This creates a double divide: the students most exposed to risks and social vulnerabilities are also the least likely to find teachers capable of supporting them in navigating the online world.
In 2025, the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology commissioned Ipsos UK to conduct qualitative research to understand parents’ needs and challenges with their children’s digital media. The survey, based on 15 focus groups and 10 in-depth interviews with parents of children aged 7 to 17, describes adults who are aware of the risks but often unsure how to effectively address them.
Initially, many parents associated media literacy almost exclusively with the ability to use apps and devices, not with critical thinking, evaluating sources, or understanding the consequences of online actions. Only after a more complete definition of the concept did they recognize that it also involves helping their children evaluate information, manage their digital reputation, protect their privacy, and build respectful relationships online. However, they described a constant feeling of “chasing” ever-new technologies and platforms, often feeling as though their children were the ones who had to explain to their parents how the tools they use every day work.
The same research highlights a low awareness of existing resources: many parents, when they have concerns about online safety, cyberbullying, or inappropriate content, rely on quick Google searches or word of mouth, rather than structured materials from public agencies or dedicated educational programs. Schools, for their part, sometimes offer meetings or workshops on online safety, but these are one-off initiatives, not a continuous program of support for families.
Starting in elementary school, children are given online research assignments— from the solar system to dinosaurs —often without specific training on how to search safely, evaluate sources, or recognize unreliable content. Many teachers recognize the importance of teaching research skills, but in practice, these skills are taught in a haphazard and fragmented manner.
Tools like the CRAAP (1. Current 2. Relevance 3. Accuracy 4. Authority 5. Purpose ) test (which asks you to evaluate a source based on its currency, relevance, authority, accuracy , and purpose) are widely used in universities and some schools, but they rarely become a structured part of basic education. Research has shown that even university students and professionals—including historians—tend to focus on the content of the page rather than on critical contextual elements such as the author, the responsible body, or the interests involved. If highly educated adults struggle to navigate credible and non-credible sources, it’s unrealistic to expect eight- or ten-year-olds to do so without explicit guidance.
In middle and high school, students are given school-level accounts on platforms like Google Classroom, but often without proper user training to clarify the ethical, legal, and relational implications of these tools. Instead of being introduced to a collaborative and relatively protected digital ecosystem—the school domain used for documents, meetings, presentations, and shared work—they are often left to experiment on their own. At the same time, many schools and classrooms rely on WhatsApp groups run by parents or, at times, made up entirely of minors for communication and group work. These spaces are not designed as institutional channels, lack moderation and traceability, and inevitably expose phone numbers and other personal data.
Recent analyses of school WhatsApp groups highlight concrete risks: uncontrolled dissemination of information, overlapping of private and school agendas, and the potential for conflict fueled by misunderstandings in written language. Meanwhile, many students lack clear netiquette training: they aren’t taught that tone doesn’t always translate into text, that screenshots can circulate for a long time, that sharing others’ images requires consent, and that written communication leaves permanent traces.
Numerous studies on digital citizenship education show that, internationally, one of the most recurring critical issues is the lack of a clear and progressive curriculum: there is no shared definition of what an eight-year-old should be able to do with regard to online research and safety, or what skills in evaluating sources and managing social media a fourteen-year-old should possess. In the absence of these references, each school, and often each teacher, constructs its own curriculum, with inevitable gaps and overlaps for students.
Recent literature identifies four main obstacles that recur in different school systems:
In this context, digital education risks becoming an “extra module” to be inserted when time is spare, rather than a transversal lens through which to interpret and teach all subjects.
More recent studies on the relationship between screen time and academic achievement paint a more nuanced picture than the “more screen time = less learning” narrative. A Canadian longitudinal study, followed through 2023, observed an association between increased screen time in early childhood and slightly lower reading and math scores in later years, particularly due to passive television and video use. The authors emphasize, however, that the impact depends greatly on the type of content, the context (alone or shared with adults), and the time taken away from activities such as play, reading, and face-to-face interaction.
The point, then, is not to demonize the screen itself, but to question how it is used: a tablet can be a tool for creativity, exploration, and active learning, or simply passive entertainment that replaces essential experiences for cognitive and social development. Without adults capable of distinguishing and guiding children in these choices, we remain stuck in the mindset of generic prohibitions or a “do-it-yourself” approach.
International literature on the digital divide highlights how the problem isn’t just the availability of devices and connections, but also—and above all—the ability to use them competently. Children growing up in low-income families have, on average, less access to computers and broadband at home, and their parents are less likely to have sufficient digital skills to assist them with homework, research, and safe social media management.
Analysis of US data shows that high-income families more often have multiple devices and stable connections, while a significant share of low-income adults rely exclusively on smartphones for internet access. During the pandemic, this translated into concrete difficulties in following remote learning: many students were unable to connect consistently, lacked a quiet space, or an adult capable of supporting them with digital tools. In practice, digital technology, rather than reducing inequalities, risks amplifying them if not accompanied by inclusion policies and targeted education.
A report from the London School of Economics analyzed how school curricula address misinformation and digital literacy, showing that critical thinking is often taught abstractly, without addressing in depth the specific mechanisms by which fake news and distorted content circulate online. In many schools, students learn to “synthesize” or “write essays,” but not to verify the provenance of news, recognize manipulative headlines, or understand the role of algorithms in building their feeds.
Research by foundations such as the Nuffield Institute and the Jubilee Centre in the UK, however, indicates that children between the ages of 9 and 11 can learn to recognize typical elements of fake news if they receive explicit, ongoing, and integrated teaching across different subjects, not limited to one isolated project. When news literacy is treated as a basic skill, children develop greater immunity to misleading content and are less vulnerable to orchestrated disinformation campaigns.
To prevent digital education from remaining an empty slogan, coordinated interventions are needed at three levels. According to the European Digital Education Content Framework :
The picture emerging from European data and international research is clear: we live in highly digitalized societies in which many adults have not yet developed adequate skills to navigate them, let alone educate others to do so. Until this reality is openly addressed, we will continue to expect children to learn how to navigate online on their own, while the adults who should be guiding them remain behind.
Shifting the focus from “the Internet isn’t made for children” to “adults aren’t yet ready to educate digitally” is uncomfortable, but necessary. It means recognizing that digital literacy—for teachers, parents, and institutions—is now an essential component of citizenship and basic education, not a technological accessory. Until this cultural leap occurs, the paradox will remain intact: digital natives left alone in an environment that adults don’t understand enough to teach. And this, despite the proclamations, is the true educational failure of our time.
Inva Malaj