Denaturalising “the digital child”: Genealogy and the governance of mediated futures

Contemporary children’s digital rights discourse increasingly assumes that human flourishing depends on safe, optimised participation in digital environments and that institutional futures are inherently digital. This article develops a genealogical theory of “the digital child” as a mediated subject produced through the convergence of digital rights discourse, platform infrastructures, and compulsory institutional environments. Using schooling as a paradigmatic site of compulsory media participation, it denaturalises the presumption of “digital futures” by showing how digital inevitability emerges through policy genres, infrastructural dependence, and limited refusal. Drawing on Simone Weil’s claim that obligations precede rights and on Foucauldian genealogy, it analyses children’s digital rights instruments and education digitisation strategies. It traces four recurring regimes of problematisation—protection, participation, agency, skills/future readiness—through which digital-by-default participation becomes morally obligatory and practically difficult to refuse. It concludes by proposing an obligations-first framework for governing mediated futures in compulsory contexts, foregrounding necessity , proportionality , reversibility , and contestability as evaluative criteria for media governance where participation is infrastructural and not voluntary.