Children and social media. Finding new approaches in Italian agencies initiatives

The paper shows how the Italian policy makers deal with the new media scenario regarding the relationship between children and social media both from the viewpoint of their safeguard and concerning their digital education, highlighting in particular a convergence between these two outlooks. If social media is evolving, adding contacts to contents, in an ecological concept, opportunities are being added to the risks; child empowerment is beginning to appear together with his/her protection. At the same time, digital competence frameworks take into greater consideration the social element as well as the purely technical element and that of a critical reading of media messages. This paper therefore offers a qualitative analysis of three recent institutional Italian initiatives: the White Paper on media and minors of the AGCOM (the Italian media regulation agency), the Digital School Action Plan (linked to the school reform law 107/2015) and the Connected Generations Initiative (The Italian Safer Internet Centre). By the mean of their policies, within their mission, we show how child safeguard and digital literacy approaches are evolving, and, to some extent, converging.