The Digital Backlash in Education: Panic, Politics, or Pedagogy?
5th May 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM BST
In recent years, debates about digital technologies in education have shifted from what could be described as a digital hype to a digital backlash. Digital tools are increasingly framed as threats to learning, cognition, and the well-being of children and young people, and nations worldwide have started to implement more restrictive digitalization policies, such as banning smartphones from the classroom. This presentation explores recurring patterns in the arguments underpinning this shift, across time and national settings, and how similar narratives of harm and calls for scientific ‘evidence’ have resulted in different national policy responses. It discusses how this backlash emerged, what forms of knowledge and expertise have shaped it, and whether it can be used as a provocation to inform a more sustainable and pedagogically grounded relation to digital technologies in education.
Speaker Biography
Ingrid Forsler is an Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University, Sweden. Her research concerns imaginaries and future visions of digital technologies in education, in recent years focused mainly on the growing resistance against digital devices in schools. She is also interested in the postdigital, material, and infrastructural dimensions of contemporary learning environments.
