Digital Literacy Education: Families, Schools and Communities as Co-Navigators in Democracy

Democracy in the twenty-first century depends on citizens who are able to navigate the digital world with confidence, critical insight, and responsibility. As information increasingly flows through social media platforms, search engines, and AI-driven tools, the ability to evaluate, question, and create digital content is as fundamental as the ability to read and write was in earlier eras. This is why digital literacy education is no longer a secondary skill or an optional extra: it is the foundation of civic participation. Without it, societies risk producing citizens who are passive consumers of information rather than active, critical participants in democratic life.

This article builds on two recent studies authored by Parents International’s researchers — Eszter Salamon, Aristidis Protopsaltis, Judit Horgas, and Luca Janka László — produced as part of EU-funded research. The Role of Community Learning in Developing Digital Literacy (forthcoming in a monograph by Educar) draws on evidence from the DRONE, EFFEct and SAILS projects to explore how informal networks shape children’s digital competences.

Sailing Masters in the Digital Age: Supporting Families and Schools in Navigating Online Safety and AI Challenges (to appear in the upcoming IPCN volume) synthesises findings from the PARTICIPATE and DRONE projects, highlighting the critical role of families and schools in digital citizenship education. Together, these studies provide a comprehensive evidence base for rethinking digital literacy education in democratic contexts.

Broken Ecosystems: Why Schools Lag Behind

Evidence from multiple EU projects highlights a troubling reality: schools remain marginal in digital literacy education. Surveys conducted in Hungary and the Netherlands revealed that not a single participating primary or secondary student reported being taught basic skills such as password protection, safe use of email, or evaluating online sources. The unanimity of these results is striking and suggests not just gaps but systemic neglect.

The reasons are complex. Teacher training programmes still focus largely on technical proficiency — how to use digital devices or software — rather than on transversal competences such as resilience, ethical decision-making, and critical engagement with media. Curricula are often outdated, designed for a pre-digital era, and rarely address urgent issues such as misinformation, disinformation, or the ethical dimensions of AI. In many cases, teachers themselves lack confidence in digital environments, leaving them ill-prepared to guide students in developing the higher-order skills that digital citizenship requires.

This disconnect undermines trust in formal education. Parents perceive schools as out of step with reality and therefore take on the responsibility themselves. Children, meanwhile, turn to peers or family networks rather than to teachers when seeking guidance. The result is that the very institutions designed to equalise opportunities and reduce inequalities end up reinforcing them: children with digitally literate parents thrive, while those without such support risk being left behind.

Families as Sailing Masters in the Digital Age

In the absence of effective school-based programmes, families are becoming the primary navigators of the digital seas. Research consistently shows that parents are the first point of contact when children face challenges online. In both the Netherlands and Hungary, more than half of students say they would turn to their parents before teachers or peers if confronted with online bullying. This highlights a profound shift in the balance of educational responsibility: parents are not only role models but also frontline educators in the digital sphere.

This responsibility, however, comes with significant challenges. Parents frequently express that they feel underprepared to provide comprehensive digital literacy education. Many rely on self-training, trial and error, or skills picked up at work. They may be adept at handling technical matters, but less confident when it comes to guiding children through complex issues such as evaluating the reliability of news sources, understanding algorithmic bias, or managing online risks without compromising participation rights.

Nevertheless, families bring advantages that schools often cannot. Learning in the home environment is personalised, embedded in daily routines, and shaped by cultural values. Parents can model responsible behaviour, discuss sensitive issues in context, and adapt guidance to the developmental stage of their children. Informal conversations about media, even when seemingly light-hearted, often provide children with their first lessons in critical evaluation. But the uneven distribution of resources, knowledge, and confidence among parents creates significant inequalities. Without systemic support, relying solely on families risks deepening divides between digitally rich and digitally poor households.

The Power of Community Learning

Communities act as the bridge between families and schools, and their role in digital literacy education is increasingly decisive. Libraries, after-school programmes, cultural institutions, and grassroots organisations provide safe, inclusive spaces where children can explore digital tools, learn collaboratively, and access support that neither families nor schools can fully provide.

Evidence from the DRONE project shows that community settings are often where the most meaningful digital learning takes place. Children learn best when digital skills are tied to real-world contexts: fact-checking a news story encountered on social media, troubleshooting a device with friends, or creating digital content for a community project. Peer-to-peer learning is particularly powerful. When children teach and support each other, they not only acquire technical competencies but also develop social and civic skills essential to democratic participation.

Community learning also fosters inclusion. Contrary to common assumptions, migrant families and minority groups have often proven highly resourceful in digital environments. Rather than lagging behind, many have leveraged community networks to overcome barriers of language or access. Similarly, research on children with disabilities suggests that their main obstacles are technical — lack of assistive technologies — rather than cognitive. Community-based approaches that provide appropriate tools can therefore achieve inclusivity without resorting to segregated programmes.

By situating digital learning within real-life social networks, communities help children and families build resilience, adaptability, and critical awareness. They act not just as supplementary spaces but as essential pillars of a democratic digital ecosystem.

Teachers and Schools: From Gatekeepers to Partners

Despite current shortcomings, schools cannot be written out of the picture. They remain the only institutions with a universal mandate to reach all children, and their potential to reinforce family and community learning is considerable. The challenge is to redefine their role. Instead of gatekeepers of information — a role rendered obsolete in the digital era — schools must become partners in integrated ecosystems of digital literacy education.

This shift requires a new vision of teacher professionalism. Teachers need competences that go far beyond the ability to use digital tools. They must be able to foster critical thinking, cultivate digital resilience, and guide ethical decision-making. They also need community partnership skills: the ability to collaborate with parents, engage with local organisations, and value children’s peer learning as part of the educational process.

Transforming schools in this way is not a quick fix. It requires sustained investment in teacher training, curriculum reform, and institutional culture. But the evidence is clear: where schools work in genuine partnership with families and communities, children develop stronger digital skills, show greater resilience to online risks, and engage more confidently in democratic participation.

Policy Gaps and the Role of Technology Companies

Policy responses so far have been piecemeal. Governments have tended to prioritise hardware and connectivity, often in response to crises such as the COVID-19 school closures, without addressing deeper pedagogical and structural issues. This leaves families and communities to fill the void, often with limited resources.

In the meantime, technology companies exert enormous influence. Tools provided by Apple, Google, and Meta shape children’s daily experiences online. While some companies, such as Apple, have made strides in privacy-focused parental controls, others rely on surveillance-oriented models that prioritise data collection over child rights. This tension between commercial interests and democratic values makes clear that digital literacy education cannot be divorced from regulation and accountability.

Policymakers must balance innovation with protection, ensuring that children’s participation rights are safeguarded alongside their safety. This requires frameworks that bring together governments, schools, families, and technology providers in shared responsibility rather than competition. Without such frameworks, democratic societies risk ceding control of digital learning environments to unregulated commercial actors.

AI, Misinformation and the Critical Thinking Challenge

The advent of generative AI has added a new dimension to the digital literacy debate. Tools capable of producing text, images, and video indistinguishable from human creation present opportunities but also risks. Parents across Europe express mixed attitudes: Dutch and German families are already using AI tools to support learning, while Italian and Hungarian parents remain sceptical or uninformed.

At the same time, misinformation and disinformation continue to spread rapidly online, undermining trust in institutions and distorting democratic debate. Families attempt to respond, whether by fact-checking, cross-referencing, or discussing news within the household. But without coordinated support, these strategies remain uneven and insufficient.

Addressing these challenges requires embedding critical thinking at the heart of digital literacy education. Children — and adults — must understand how algorithms shape the content they see, why biases matter, and how to verify information in a landscape where fabricated material can circulate as easily as fact. AI literacy, including awareness of ethical, societal, and civic dimensions, should become a standard component of curricula, integrated across disciplines rather than confined to technical courses. Only then can societies equip citizens with the tools they need to participate responsibly in digital democracies.

Building Integrated Learning Ecosystems

What emerges clearly from the evidence is that no single actor can deliver digital literacy education alone. Families, schools, communities, governments, and technology companies each hold pieces of the puzzle, but only integration can create a complete picture.

Integrated ecosystems must recognise parents as equal partners in education, value the contributions of community organisations, and reimagine schools as collaborative hubs. They must be supported by policies that prioritise child rights, not just risk avoidance, and funded in ways that strengthen informal as well as formal learning spaces. The University of Illinois’ Digital Literacy for All Learners project provides one example, uniting teachers, librarians, community leaders, parents, and students into shared networks. Europe can build on similar models, adapting them to local contexts to ensure inclusivity and resilience.

Recommendations for Action

To move from evidence to practice, policymakers and educators should:

Co-create policies that treat parents as equal partners in digital literacy education.
Invest in community learning spaces such as libraries, youth centres, and cultural institutions.
Reform teacher training to prioritise transversal skills: critical thinking, digital citizenship, and partnership-building.
Regulate technology companies to promote privacy-first, rights-respecting design.
Integrate AI and misinformation literacy into curricula across all disciplines, linking technical understanding with ethical and civic awareness.

Conclusion: Towards Resilient Digital Citizenship

The research is unambiguous: children today acquire digital skills primarily outside formal school settings. Families and communities have become the true engines of digital literacy education, while schools lag behind. This fractured system not only undermines child safety but also weakens the democratic fabric at a time when AI and disinformation are reshaping public life.

But this is not an inevitable outcome. By recognising parents as “sailing masters,” empowering communities as hubs of inclusion, and transforming schools into collaborative partners, societies can rebuild digital ecosystems that serve both children and democracy. The stakes are high: digital literacy is the key to informed citizenship, creative participation, and democratic resilience.

This analysis is grounded in two scholarly contributions by Parents International’s research team. The Role of Community Learning in Developing Digital Literacy (forthcoming in Educar) reflects work undertaken in the DRONE, EFFEct and SAILS projects. Sailing Masters in the Digital Age: Supporting Families and Schools in Navigating Online Safety and AI Challenges (forthcoming in IPCN) builds on findings from PARTICIPATE and DRONE. Together, these EU-funded studies provide a robust evidence base for rethinking digital literacy education in democratic contexts.