Children's Rights in an Age of Information and Communication Technologies

Abstract

We live in a socio-cultural, informational and technological context that poses new educational challenges for society in general but above all for children. In this paper, we present a proposal that should help to maximise the capacity of children to face the challenges presented by today’s society. We draw attention to the fact that in an age of information technology such as ours, children as a group risk marginalization. The children’s bill of rights in the XXI century needs to build on those drawn up in the XX century and should be extended to include those rights that safeguard life styles and living conditions and a child’s right to play and learn, in keeping with the specific conditions of the XXI century. To this end, we frame a proposal concerning the rights of children in a society increasingly dominated by information and communication technologies. Throughout Europe, there is much current debate about children’s rights linked with mass media and information and communication technologies. We describe several projects that offer hope for the promotion of greater responsibility on the part of the mass media given their pervasive ability to shape thinking, projects that may help to mitigate the influence of the media, including information and communication technologies on children.