Empowering Postdigital Childhoods: From Familial Practices to Educational Reimagination

With the advent of generative AI, the processes of data extraction and usage for the purposes of providing humans interacting with chatbots immediate responses have just expanded exponentially (Graux et al., 2024). People are sharing personal and sensitive information with the genAI-powered chatbots easily reachable through widely spread apps such as WhatsApp, Messenger, or Instagram (Meta, 2025; Solon & Fiegerman, 2024). In parallel, with the positive values attached to social networks as a pro-social space during the last decade, people have been sharing more and more personal information, in a rush to capture attention through social desirability (Hui et al., 2024). Being visible goes hand in hand with capturing data, and it is therefore actually powered as a mechanism by several key features within the platforms such as filters, characters, and AI-powered audio and video connections; in time, this determines negative social effects like polarization, information impoverishment and de-skilling (Robertson et al., 2024). The same type of effects are multiplied with AI usage: information distortion, flattening, and bias are embedded in many of the results we get through interactions with chatbots (Floridi, 2023; Scott, 2023; Cristianini, 2023). Children, as any other citizen with attributed rights, are also part of this landscape. As Barassi (Barassi, 2020, p. 14) explains, children’s datafication “is not linear, cohesive, nor rational, but it is rather a complex and messy process that is defined by a plurality of technological possibilities, designs, and organizational intentions” (p.14). Large datasets formed upon the children’s exposure to social media, AI-powered toys, and interfaces embed bias and injustice (Lupton & Williamson, 2017). As we expected during the call, the authors in this special issue contributed to build a constellation of interdisciplinary contributions that collectively illuminate the complex, layered relationship between early childhood, digital technologies, and educational practices in a postdigital society.