This introductory chapter elucidates the profound impact of the Internet on our society and the complexities involved in its regulation. In a polarized political landscape, concerns about Internet safety for children appear to be the only bipartisan agreement across the ideological aisle. Recent legislative actions in the United States exemplify the urgent response to the dangers posed to minors by social media. This trend, also reflected internationally, underscores the paradox of restricting Internet access for youth, balancing the need for protection with the benefits of digital literacy. While the Internet poses risks, it is also a powerful tool for cognitive and social development, offering educational resources and fostering global awareness. This duality illustrates the complexity of navigating a safe digital environment without stifling free expression.

This chapter presents the content of a comprehensive exploration of digital communication’s impact on social, political, and cultural life, providing insights into the new paradigms that shape our contemporary world.

The chapter explores the impact of new technologies on liberal democracy, highlighting both positive and negative dimensions. E-governance, facilitated by information and communication technologies, improves efficiency, transparency, and accountability, reducing the need for physical government visits. AI-supported online voting enhances participation and prevents fraud, while social media and online communities can foster social capital. However, challenges arise as well. Social media algorithms can manipulate information, affecting public opinion, and tech giants’ dominance may influence democratic participation. Increased reliance on digital systems exposes governments to cybersecurity threats, undermining public confidence. Inequality in internet access disenfranchises those without it, leading to voter suppression and declining trust. Algorithms contribute to polarization and filter bubbles, with deepfakes impacting political discourse. In totalitarian contexts, technology aids activism against authoritarian regimes through anonymous communication and encryption. The chapter concludes by advocating strategies for maximizing benefits and minimizing harm, emphasizing digital literacy, citizen education, data privacy regulations, responsible technology use, community empowerment, activism, awareness, and accountability for ethical use by governments and tech companies. Recognizing the importance of both physical and digital connections is crucial for thriving liberal democracies.

The chapter explores the "digital divides" concept, indicating disparities in access to digital technologies based on factors like economic status, location, age, and ethnicity. Initially focused on internet access, the definition has evolved to highlight "digital literacy." Divides may result from a lack of devices or reliable internet, with economic factors playing a role. The chapter emphasizes their impact on education, employment, online information access, and social participation. Four forms of digital divides are identified: access, skills, quality-of-use, and outcome divides, each impacting various aspects of individuals’ lives. The chapter concludes by discussing initiatives, including government investment and affordable hardware programs, to address these divides. The passage briefly mentions the reverse digital divide, where affluent families limit screen time, while less affluent ones use digital devices as a cost-effective childcare alternative.

This chapter discusses the impact of digital technology on children’s development, addressing both positive and negative aspects. It notes the significant increase in children’s use of digital devices and explores how technology affects learning, social connections, self-expression, problem-solving skills, coordination, memory, and concentration. The passage delves into the potential negative consequences, such as the impact on mental health, self-esteem, social and relational skills, privacy concerns, and the risk of addiction. The potential benefits of technology include increased access to information, immersive learning experiences, personalized learning, collaboration, and exposure to different cultures. However, overreliance on technology for communication and entertainment can lead to social isolation, reduced physical activity, and negative mental health outcomes. The chapter emphasizes the importance of digital literacy education, whereby children learn to navigate and critically evaluate online content. It also explores the potential risks of excessive screen time, including sleep disturbances, vision problems, and physical health issues. Various strategies for minimizing risks and maximizing benefits are suggested. The chapter concludes with recommendations for maintaining open communication, collaborating with children to establish guidelines for responsible technology use, and being a positive role model regarding screen time and offline activities.

Technology has become central to both the personal and social aspects of our lives. In the classroom, digital literacy is the pupils’ ability to discern quality sources and evaluate the appropriateness of online content as it relates to the task or activity they are undertaking, while respecting the intellectual property rights of the content owners. The chapter discusses online safety and the use of social media in a considerate and respectful manner, and examines what these issues mean for the student teacher in a modern foreign languages classroom. In addition, it looks at the benefits of technology in modern foreign languages learning and teaching, and highlights important caveats and common pitfalls.

After a discussion of X (Twitter) and the kinds of feelings, sentiments, and practices that it engenders in users, Chapter 7 explores what people do on screens: the social practices, thinking, and being that occur in postdigitality. Pursuing the mission of the book to seek the human in the machine, this chapter attends to how crescent voices act at screens, discovering the many learned and habituated digital literacy practices which allow screen users to perform their identities multimodally in multitudinous and diverse ways. Based on interviewee accounts, this chapter offers a model of postdigital practices which employs the concepts of fishbowls, antholes, rabbitholes, and wormholes, while also drawing on Charles Taylor’s social imaginaries.

This chapter introduces the book, laying out its central questions, including what it means to be postdigital, what diverse kinds of life and humanity can be found in screens, and what new technologies such as automation and AI might mean for screen lives. Chapter 1 also describes both the background and aspirations of the book, as well as its structure and a guide on how to approach reading it. Beyond discussing the defining research questions, this chapter also details the ideas underpinning the book, including the notion that there has been a tangible shift between how we related to screens a decade ago and how we do now. In addition, the book is guided by an awareness of the often conflicting and intricate relationships people have with screens, as well as the concept of the ‘smallness of screen lives’, inspired by Deborah Hicks’ notion. The Comfort of Screens is a tapestry which unfolds a story of postdigital life, sewn from the fabric of 17 people’s screen lives, interviews with whom form the backbone of the book. These ‘crescent voices’ are also introduced in this chapter.

Moving on to AI and algorithms, the penultimate chapter of the book focuses on the importance of vigilance and criticality when engaging with screens. The influence of AI and algorithms on day-to-day interactions, their inherent potential to steal content, and their tendencies to stir up racism and intolerance all mean that it is becoming increasingly vital for researchers, policymakers, and educators to understand these technologies. This chapter argues that being informed and armed with meta-awareness about AI and algorithmic processes is now key to critical digital literacy. In arguing towards this conclusion, it starts by presenting scholarly perspectives and research on AI and literacy, before turning to Ruha Benjamin and Safiya Umoja Noble’s research into racism in AI and algorithms, including Benjamin’s concept of the ‘New Jim Code’. Crescent voices are invoked to contextualize these ideas in real world experiences with algorithmic culture, where encounters with blackboxed practices and struggles to articulate experiences of algorithmic patterns serve to demonstrate further the importance of finding new constructs for critical literacy that encompass algorithmic logic.

In order to manage the issue of diversity of regulatory vision, States may, to some extent, harmonize substantive regulation—eliminating diversity. This is less likely than States determining unilaterally or multilaterally to develop manageable rules of jurisdiction, so that their regulation applies only in limited circumstances. The fullest realization of this “choice of law” solution would involve geoblocking or other technology that divides up regulatory authority according to a specified, and a perhaps agreed, principle. Geoblocking may be costly and ultimately porous, but it would allow different communities to effectuate their different visions of the good in the platform context. To the extent that the principles of jurisdiction are agreed, and are structured to be exclusive, platforms would have the certainty of knowing the requirements under which they must operate in each market. Of course, different communities may remain territorial states, but given the a-territorial nature of the internet, it may be possible for other divisions of authority and responsibility to develop. Cultural affinity, or political perspective, may be more compelling as an organizational principle to some than territorial co-location.

Language teaching and learning are substantially affected by the rise of digital technologies. Digitisation has resulted in the integration of a whole new set of competences into teacher education, not least with regard to what instructors have to teach their learners to enable them to become proficient users of digital technologies and to move, communicate, and interact within digital environments competently and safely. This chapter delineates the considerable cultural transformations that go hand in hand with digitisation. The aim is to capture its professional and cultural intricacies and to describe the competences that teachers and teacher educators need to become competent professional agents capable of integrating digital technologies into their own professional development and into the language classroom.

This chapter contains views expressed by eighteen human rights academics in response to two questions: what in your view are the three most influential ideas put forward during the last ten years on the topic of digital human rights? What in your view are the two or three most significant challenges related to digital human rights which necessitate conceptualisation from academia? As a generalisation, the following was concluded. The academic discourse on digital human rights takes non-coherence as an implicit condition. This theory will turn the implicit assumption into an explicit condition. This explicit condition needs to be applied to several concepts of the highest importance, pointed out the academics: digital constitutionalism, digital democracy, overlapping human rights systems and the typology of digital human rights law development.

Social media provides a range of opportunities to interact with others and to obtain information and support. However, there are also a number of risks. While much of the debate has been focused on negative aspects of social media use, it is important to have a balanced perspective so as to work towards harnessing the benefits and reducing the risks. This chapter outlines the key issues and debates by first outlining three core risks of social media: cyberaggression and cyberbullying; sexting, coercion, and risky online interactions; and misinformation and interaction with harmful online groups. It then goes on to discuss three key benefits of social media: the benefits of information-seeking online; the sense of belongingness, social support, and social capital derived from social media; and the opportunities for identity exploration and self-expression. Through discussing examples of risks and benefits that are of particular interest to current policy discussions, media, and research, we aim to provide an overview that sets the foundation for further engagement with these issues by researchers and practitioners, particularly via digital literacy and education.

The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics v. 9.0 (ACARA 2022) is structured around six content strands: Number, Algebra, Measurement, Space, Statistics and Probability. An expectation of mathematical proficiency has been embedded into curriculum content across all strands. It is expected that students will develop and apply mathematical understanding, fluency, reasoning and problem-solving as they learn mathematical content. It is these areas that typically receive the most attention in mathematics classrooms, particularly as there are requirements to assess and report on students’ progress in these strands. The Australian Curriculum v. 9.0 also identifies seven general capabilities, which encompass knowledge, skills, behaviours, and dispositions, and three cross-curriculum priorities: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia, and Sustainability. However, Atweh, Miller and Thornton (2012) contend that these areas receive minimal reference in the content descriptions and elaborations, leading to the impression that they are only given lip service. This chapter will provide an overview of the general capabilities and cross-curriculum priorities, and will also identify ways in which these aspects of the curriculum can be enacted into authentic mathematical experiences for students.

In this chapter, we draw on the cultural-historical ideas explained in Chapter 7 and Vygotsky’s work on crises and turning points in development to discuss primary and middle school-age children and how they can be supported as agentic learners taking forward their social situations of development. Support and challenge come through how environments are structured and through interactions and relationships, which involve family members, teachers and the other professionals. Key to becoming agentic learners is children’s use of cognitive tools such as literacy and numeracy, which enable them to engage with the knowledge that is valued in society and address the challenges presented to them. We explain that supporting the competent use of these tools involves taking the child’s perspective to understand their motive orientation and giving care-full relational guidance that demystifies the demands on them. We consider how digital tools and processes such as Assessment for Learning can develop learner agency. We introduce Hedegaard’s work on the double move in pedagogy and the Radical-Local initiative, which builds on Davydov’s work. Both are elaborated in Chapter 9. We conclude by discussing a cultural-historical account of resilience, which focuses on enhancing children’s agency and its importance for social inclusion.