Instrumentalising the digital: findings from a rapid evidence review of development interventions to support adolescents’ engagement with ICTs in low and middle income countries

In development agendas regarding children in low income communities, both older and emerging media are typically ignored, taken for granted or assumed to have beneficial powers that will redress social and gender inequality. Taking the field of ICT for Development (ICT4D) as a subfield of communication for development, we build on a recent rapid evidence review on adolescents’ digital media use and development interventions in low- and middle-income countries to critique the often-ubiquitous assumptions about the role and significance of new media in empowering children and adolescents in the global south. From this literature, we examine the contexts of children and adolescents’ access to and uses of information and communication technology(ICT). Noting that only a handful of studies heed the significance of social class and gender as major axes of inequality for adolescents, we subject the gap between the rhetoric of ICT-based empowerment and the realities of ICT-based practice to critical scrutiny. We call for a radical rethinking of childhood and development in light of the actual experiences, struggles and contexts.