Young people and digital literacy learning: co-producing critical citizenship practices

Growing awareness of the negative impact of digital experiences on young people’s digital safety and well-being has led schools to rely on preventative, top-down strategies that promote a culture of risk avoidance. While understandable, this impacts young people’s development of digital literacies and often impinges on their freedoms. This article explored ways to tackle some of the key digital challenges faced by young people without resorting to risk-management methods. The study foregrounds critical digital literacies as dialogical and reasoning practices, centring young people as ethical and deliberative digital beings. Drawing on three digital engagement pillars, digital literacy sessions were conducted with 160 secondary students and university students acting as “cultural guides.” Findings emphasise tasks that foster deliberation, reasoning, and communication, highlight the value of cultural guides, and support learner-led outputs as creative expressions of learning. The paper proposes principles of curriculum design that nurture informed and ethical digital users.