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Sowing Digital Awareness: Critical Education and Well-being in Algorithmic Times

09.01.2026 | Authors: Anita Arias, Mariana Rozo Paz and Betty (Hung-Chun) Liu.

Para leer en español, cliquea aqui

Image of Anita, Betty and Mariana authors of the Jaaklac blog “Sowing Awareness for Well-being in the Age of Algorithms”

This blog summarises the Podcast ‘Sowing Awareness for Well-being in the Age of Algorithms’ (in English), co-facilitated by Betty (Hung-Chun) Liu and Mariana Rozo Paz from the Jaaklac Community 2025. **Jaaklac researches and promotes Critical Digital Education (CDE) through its Principles of Collaboration and Coexistence**. On this occasion, Mariana and Betty shared their reflections on CDE and the issues that move them, such as digital well-being, data governance and deceptive design.

How does CDE relate to the wellbeing of teachers and students?

Contemporary life moves at the pace of notifications, screens, and algorithms that silently shape what we see, think, and feel. Amidst this landscape, education faces a challenge that can no longer be postponed: understanding how digital technology transforms the human experience and how to support students and teachers so that they can navigate these spaces with balance, agency, and wellbeing. The conversation between Betty, a Taiwanese biologist, innovator and educator based in Finland, and Mariana, a Colombian lawyer specialising in data governance, opens up fertile ground for reflection on this urgent need. Their voices, coming from different disciplines and backgrounds, coincide on something essential: CDE is not just a set of technical skills, but a deeply human approach that seeks to cultivate awareness, care and ethical participation.

For Mariana, CDE means no longer treating people as passive consumers of technology. The proposal is to transform them into agents capable of understanding how digital environments work, what interests they serve, and how they can relate to them without losing emotional autonomy. This means that students should be able to: question the information they receive, recognise the biases that can arise in algorithms, understand the logic behind the appeal of these platforms, and be able to decide how, when, and why they want to use certain technologies. For teachers, it means having pedagogical tools that allow them to integrate digital technology without fear, without punitive prohibitions and without losing sight of their own well-being, because the mental balance of those who accompany them is also a pedagogical condition.

Betty adds that understanding the invisible architecture of the digital environment is an essential part of well-being. Platforms influence not only attention, but also consumption, how we allocate our time, and how we interpret our relationships. In the eyes of an educator, CDE allows teachers to actively participate in designing learning experiences that prioritise human connection over tool-driven productivity. Thus, technology ceases to be a mandate and becomes a tool at the service of reflection, ethics, and emotional sustainability for those who learn and teach.

How does the design of platforms and technologies influence our daily wellbeing?

Betty and Mariana’s perspectives naturally tie in with mental health. If anything characterises today’s digital ecosystem, it is its ability to capture our attention. Endless scrolling, constant alerts and content designed to generate immediate reactions create an environment where it is difficult even for adults to disconnect. For children and adolescents, whose brains are still developing self-control, emotional regulation, and critical judgement, the impact is greater: constant comparison, hyper-stylised models of success, and feelings of inadequacy can undermine self-esteem and create cycles of anxiety that are difficult to break. CDE thus becomes an act of protection: not to ban technology, but to reveal how it operates and to accompany young people and adults in building healthy boundaries, conscious habits, and more balanced relationships with their emotions.

Mariana also points out that digital technology affects not only individual health, but also democratic health. Algorithms tend to reinforce existing preferences, creating echo chambers that limit exposure to diverse ideas. This generates environments where polarisation grows and constructive conversations become more difficult. Promoting CDE therefore means cultivating the ability to engage in respectful dialogue, listen to different points of view and recognise that democratic coexistence also plays out on our screens. If we learn to ‘feed’ algorithms with curiosity, empathy, and diversity, we will be building not only better users, but also better citizens.

What work are you doing to address current educational gaps? What can be done within formal or informal educational spaces to bridge these knowledge gaps?

Both Betty and Mariana develop projects that seek to bridge the gap between what technology promises and what educational communities actually experience. Through the Datasphere Initiative, Mariana promotes spaces where young people participate in discussions about digital policies, not as symbolic figures, but as individuals whose experiences contribute to real decisions. Through her Boldea initiative, she supports young people, especially girls, in strengthening their social-emotional skills, critical thinking, and conscious design, reminding them that technology should be a tool for building community, not an obstacle to connection.

Betty, for her part, designs workshops that combine digital literacy, critical thinking, and general well-being as part of education for sustainability. For her, true digital equity not about distributing devices, but about ensuring that everyone understands how digital technology affects decisions, behaviours, and perceptions. Only with this awareness can technology be used in a fair, balanced, and common good-oriented way.

What kind of partnerships or collaborations would be key to promoting healthier policies and practices in the digital environment?

Both Betty and Mariana agree that no single actor can do it alone. Creating a healthy digital environment requires collaboration between schools, families, ethical technology companies, policymakers, community organisations, and mental health specialists. But above all, it requires children, adolescents and young people to be at the centre of the design of the technologies they will use throughout their lives. Mariana sums it up well: it is not a question of ‘consulting’ them for the sake of it, but of truly integrating them into the conversation through safe spaces for experimentation where they can influence the development and governance of new tools, including those based on artificial intelligence.

From an educational perspective, Betty recognises that methodologies already exist that can amplify this approach: student-centred teaching methods. Project-based learning and collaborative practices can be transferred to the digital sphere to build more transparent, humane and sustainable environments. If schools partner with responsible technology companies, it would be possible to imagine platforms designed to protect mental health and encourage creativity, rather than simply maximising screen time. This is not only desirable from an ethical standpoint, but also from an economic perspective that recognises that a healthy digital environment promotes trust, stability and long-term innovation.

The conversation between Betty and Mariana reminds us that digital education is not about accompanying people, children, young people and adults to understand their own relationship with technology, to protect their well-being, to recognise their agency and to build community in spaces that sometimes seem designed to fragment it. In this sense, digital education is a commitment to human sustainability: an invitation to inhabit the digital world while remaining deeply human.

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Betty (Hung-Chun) Liu is a dynamic professional specializing in sustainability, innovation, and education, with a strong academic foundation in marine biology and aquaculture. My expertise extends to developing sustainability-focused curricula, designing impactful training programs, and integrating research into practical, market-ready solutions. With extensive experience in international collaboration, stakeholder engagement, and bilingual educational content creation, I excel at bridging academia, industry, and community initiatives. My entrepreneurial background further strengthens my ability to translate knowledge into business opportunities, fostering innovation at the intersection of education, sustainability, and economic development.

Mariana Rozo Paz is Policy, Research and Project Management Lead at the Datasphere Initiative, where she coordinates the Global Sandboxes Forum and the Youth4Data program. She has extensive experience in project design and management, stakeholder engagement and policy research on issues ranging from artificial intelligence and data governance to digital inclusion and human rights. She has 10+ years of experience in youth engagement and experiences. Alongside her role at the Datasphere Initiative, Mariana lectures at Universidad de los Andes in Colombia, teaching courses on emerging technologies, AI and digital public infrastructure, and is the co-founder and CEO of Boldea, an initiative equipping girls and youth with critical digital and life skills to navigate our changing and complex world. Mariana holds a Juris Doctor (J.D.) and a B.A. in Public Policy, both awarded with summa cum laude distinctions from Universidad de los Andes. She speaks Spanish and English, intermediate French and basic Portuguese, and is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper in Bogotá.

Jaaklac’s Community formalises past and new collective actions to close knowledge gaps and social inequalities in the world. Some of the questions we seek to answer revolve around: What are the deficits and advances in education with and about digital technologies? What kind of education promotes understanding of the social, political, economic and environmental implications of digital technologies? What collective actions facilitate our knowledge about democracies and social justice in the digital age?