Welcome to the United Nations
The intergenerational dialogue included two panels. One on Connectivity and Access and the other on Digital Literacy and Skills.
The CSocD59 event on "Youth Driving a New Social Contract: Reshaping the Digital Divide and Co-Designing Connected Futures" highlighted how the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted a whole generation of young people, laying bare new and exacerbating pre-existing inequalities, like the digital divide and technological inequality. Those without consistent, reliable access to the internet or other technology face drastic barriers to inclusive social development.
It further highlighted how the digital divides reflect and amplify existing social, cultural and economic inequalities, especially for traditionally marginalized groups, including women and young girls, indigenous youth, and youth from low-income areas.
In looking forward to the 2030 Decade of Action and providing solutions the participants discussed the importance of digital technologies in accelerating the SDGs. The discussion also emphasized that to avoid a ‘lost generation’ of young people from the pandemic, new innovative approaches to technology will be needed to forge a COVID-19 recovery that truly bridges the digital divide and leaves no one behind.
Such a new social contract for technology will have to rely on a technological commons approach and draw from the SG’s roadmap on digital cooperation and experimenting with new, inclusive approaches to digital inclusion and localization, like open-source technologies and content, educational technologies, and Digital Public Goods, and include youth as co developers and implementers.