Does Digital Educational Poverty Coincide With Educational Poverty? A Research On Digital Divide Among Italian Pre-Teens

The paper aims to rethink the concept of educational poverty in the digital age by verifying whether digital educational poverty coincides tout court with educational poverty or whether the comparison between these two dimensions requires a further in-depth analysis taking into consideration multiple social, cultural, pedagogical, expressive and psychological factors. In this perspective, digital educational poverty should not only be seen as social deprivation, but also as a cultural and expressive element, leading to reflection on the gap in creativity and "authorship" that often characterizes a poor or problematic use of social media by young people (Pasta, 2018). The Covid-19 emergency has highlighted the need to rethink the digital divide not only as regards the aspects related to technical access to technological devices and connection networks, but also in consideration of the deficit of conscious, innovative and creative use of digital technology, in a perspective oriented towards a participatory and responsible citizenship. According to Sartori (2006), in order that the Digital Divide be conceived between the complete exclusion and the conscious and creative use of digital technologies, five elements must be taken into consideration: the quality of technological means available; digital competence; the availability of social networks that can provide motivation and possible advice; autonomy of use to satisfy personal interests; the variety of objectives. At the same time, the three dimensions of aesthetics, criticism and ethics become central to analyzing the production and the use of the different forms of digital content (Rivoltella, 2020). On this basis, this paper will use the data emerging from a survey carried out by the Cremit-Catholic University and Save the Children Italy, which in the first months of 2021 involved students of lower secondary schools (12-13 years) throughout Italy. The results of the survey will be interpreted in the light of the most recent theories on the relationship between digital media and learning - in particular with reference to the concept of Dynamic Literacies and “Third space literacies” in contexts for learning (Potter, McDougall, 2017) and to Community Technologies framework (Rivoltella, 2017 and 2021) – in order to identify a number of key points to develop socio-cultural and pedagogical interventions able to identify and reduce digital educational poverty, through participatory design, collective intelligence and narrative creativity.