What the Future Wants is a youth initiative from Tactical Tech that aims to put young people in the driving seat of their digital futures through education, co-creation and capacity building.
Young people grow up in an environment that is increasingly driven by and dependent upon digital technologies. Their social, learning and play spaces are being encroached upon by ubiquitous technologies so that the divide between public and private, online and offline is being eroded. At a time of crucial development this leaves them exposed to a unique set of challenges, such as tech habits and addiction, information pollution, algorithms and discrimination and data surveillance.
The What the Future Wants project seeks to define and address these challenges alongside young people and those that support them. Through research, educational curricula and creative interventions, we will work towards increasing the data literacy of the next generation so that they can think critically and proactively about the digital environment they want to live in now and in the future.
Visit the What the Future Wants website: https://theglassroom.org/youth/
This is a new initiative at Tactical Tech. If you are working on similar topics and want to collaborate, we would love to hear from you. Please write to youth@tacticaltech.org.
This series outlines the initiation, delivery, and findings of the What the Future Wants project (so far) in the hope that other organisations, initiatives, and individuals working with young people can learn from our experience and the rich insights of all of the young people who contributed.
In this mini-series, we explore how Tactical Tech’s first youth-centered team co-created the public education intervention What the Future Wants, which was released in Spring 2022. Here we dive into the workshops we conducted and share principles and practices that informed the co-creation process and findings from the workshops.
The Digital You initiative is a collaboration between Goethe-Institut Kinshasa and Tactical Tech, that invites young people in Sub-Saharan African countries to think critically about their relationship with digital technologies and how tech influences their lives.
The What the Future Wants project is looking for a Safeguarding Expert with experience working with young people (11-18 years old), for a limited-duration consultancy. The Safeguarding Expert will conduct a training session for Tactical Tech staff and partners and draft written guidelines for safeguarding practices to be implemented when working with young people worldwide.
Tactical Tech is looking for partners to collaborate with the What the Future Wants (WTFW), a project that aims to put young people in the driving seat of their digital futures and enable them to think critically and proactively about the digital environment they want to live.
What are the persuasive design and 'dark patterns' that keep us hooked to our phones? The Unboxing Tech Toolkit, developed by the Pranava Institute alongside young people in India, is a youth workbook about how technology can tune our behavior, emotions and attention, and importantly, what can be done about it.
Detox de Datos Latinx is a social media campaign and project for young people in Latin America and the Caribbean to educate their peers about data and technology, based on our Data Detox x Youth.
Tactical Tech is seeking partners to work with us to deliver a new project that explores the topics of European youth, technology, culture and critical thinking based on our award-winning project The Glass Room.
This summer, tens of thousands of British school students took to the streets to protest the use of an algorithm that predicted their end-of-school grades. A new article on Medium from the coordinator of our Youth project, Daisy Kidd, looks at the normalisation of monitoring and surveillance in education.
How much screen time is too much for children of different ages? This article from the Data Detox Kit provides essential advice for parents as part of the new 'Youth and Families' section.
A new article on Medium by Stephanie Hankey, our Executive Director, and Daisy Kidd, coordinator of our upcoming Youth project, considers how digital technologies are designed for young people and asks the question: What does the future want?
Data Detox x Youth is an activity book to help young people take control of their tech. This interactive toolkit encourages young people to think about different aspects of their digital lives, from their social media profiles to their passwords, with simple activities for reflection and play.
