Early intervention is the key to ensuring that kids adopt healthy attitudes and behaviors towards technology.
NewTechKids is developing ways to shape these in young children through a series of lessons we’re teaching which emphasize good judgement and active decision-making. During the 2025-2026 school year, we are teaching weekly digital literacy lessons at IKC Metropool, a primary school located in Amsterdam southeast, an area with a large proportion of low-income, immigrant and refugee families.
Our recent classes for students in groups 1 and 2 (ages 4-6) focused on online safety, making good choices about the games, apps and multimedia content they access. We are using scenarios to teach them things like what is appropriate content for their age range, why it’s important to think before clicking on big, bright and colorful buttons, and what to do if they see something that is scary or inappropriate.
The great thing is that all of them know that the best reaction is to go to an adult (parent, teacher, caregiver) for help. The not-so-great thing is that little kids are often exposed to inappropriate content for their age by either 1) using the devices of the parents or older siblings and 2) engaging in fun and social activities with older siblings like playing video games, watching YouTube and TikTok videos, and playing around with Snapchat filters. (One 4-year old boy spoke proudly of playing ‘Grand Theft Auto’ with his five older brothers!)
Another great thing is that most of their parents impose strict time restrictions on their device usage.
(One final funny story: these students speak Dutch and attend a Dutch-language school. When we recently played a game of ‘Name the App’, many could not name YouTube but yelled “Like and Subscribe” in English when shown the YouTube logo.)