Life Skills and Wellbeing of Children and Youth In Digital World: Learning to Live Together In Interconnected World

The World today is navigating an era of profound transformation, accelerated by climate crisis, global conflicts, digital disruptions, social fragmentation and widening inequalities. At this critical juncture, education of children and youth must be reimagined not merely as a tool of employability but as a public good that fosters ethical leadership, peaceful coexistence and planetary wellbeing. Life skills learning in this digital world is of paramount importance in equitable, inclusive and sustainable societies. Culturally grounded and contextually relevant sustainable life skills ecosystems strengthen the resilience of educators, learners and communities in response to climate crisis, political instability and socio-economic disruptions. In this background the proposed session is to explore the evolving role of education in fostering ethical agency, ecological responsibility and adaptive capacities of children through life skills lens. This session will provide a platform to discuss transformative approaches to pedagogy and policy that integrate psychosocial competencies into mainstream curricula across diverse learning spaces for children and youth; and to assess the impact of digital transformation on equity, civic freedoms, and wellbeing. Papers and research experiences are invited to discuss digital citizenship and well being of children to navigate misinformation, surveillance and disconnection in hyperconnected spaces. The session invites papers from childhood and youth researchers from all over the world to compare life skills experience of children in digitally connected Global North and South in the 21^st century.