Evolution of Digitally Connected Families 1990-2022

Mal Lee and Martin Levins

The just published peer reviewed study by Lee and Levins (Lee and Levins, 2023) alerts the world to two largely unheralded, education changing global phenomena:

  •  the evolution of digitally connected families
  • that the two-thirds of the world’s population digitally connected at the close of 2022 had naturally grown being digital, with the remaining third on trend to follow suite.

The authors’ posit it has been the digitally connected families of the world that have primarily grown nations’ young being digital. Schools and governments have played little or no part in readying or supporting them to learn informally everyday with the digital, with the trend vary much for the families to take a greater lead role and the schools less.

The lead role has been taken, likely unwittingly by the digitally connected families of the world, at a time in history when to live in a digital society citizens must be connected and growing being digital lifelong. The unconnected are marginalised and socially, educationally, economically and politically disadvantaged. 

The study was published in December 2023, in Studies in Technology Enhanced Learning. It can be viewed at:

https://stel.pubpub.org/pub/03-03-lee-levins/release/1