Benjamin Horton, Project Lead, Common Futures Conversations, Chatham House – United Kingdom, at the 21st Infopoverty World Conference addressed the issue of the digital society, emphasizing the participation and contribution that young people could guarantee in this process.
What can be the best ways to develop better models to include young people?
To develop a fairer and more inclusive digital society, we should bridge this gap between policy elites and youth. So, we, at Chatham House, launched a project called “Common futures conversations”, which delivers an online community space for young people to develop their own ideas. We are increasingly good at engaging young people, and having them represented in policy discussions, but we have not worked out sufficient models to allow them to actually participate once they have got into the room yet. In my opinion, something that all of us need to think about as we're developing an inclusive digital society, is the need to develop better participatory models for youth inclusion, not just in international negotiations, but also at national level and local government level. So young people should be contributors to the discussions, not simply observers.