Postdigital Backlash: Past, Present, Future, 22–23 June 2026, Zagreb, Croatia
The conference Postdigital Backlash: Past, Present, Future took place in Zagreb, Croatia, on 22 and 23 June 2026. The term and concept of “digital backlash” encompass debates and developments that reveal a growing scepticism towards the ubiquity of digital technologies and networks, following a period in which virtually every manifestation of advancing digitalisation was viewed predominantly with enthusiasm.
Sweden provides a particularly prominent example of the effects of this digital backlash. The country was once a pioneer in the digitalisation of schools and pursued a one-to-one strategy under which every schoolchild was to be provided with their own digital device for use in the classroom. From 2019 onwards, the use of digital devices was mandatory in all schools.
Since 2023, however, and following the publication of several academic studies highlighting the negative effects of digitalisation, Swedish education policy has undergone a major reversal. Instead of investing in new digital devices, the government is once again directing funds towards textbooks and libraries. The conclusion was that digital devices in the classroom caused considerable distraction and concentration difficulties among pupils. In other EU countries and beyond, most notably Australia, there has also been increasing debate about banning young people from social media, introducing age restrictions and regulating platforms.
The Postdigital Backlash conference used these discussions as a starting point for examining how these developments came about and whether the recently emerging scepticism towards digital media might provide a productive basis for shaping future developments. The continuing debates surrounding digital technologies, particularly in education, demonstrate both the demand for and the necessity of empirical knowledge and theoretically grounded discussion that move beyond simplistic arguments for or against digitalisation. The conference was based on the premise that the postdigital approach offers a particularly valuable framework for this purpose, as it considers the deep entrenchment of digital infrastructures in contemporary societies alongside the importance of critical reflection and visions for the future.
The conference attracted considerable interest, particularly from the research community working on postdigitality and education, whose principal forum is the journal Postdigital Science and Education. Over the course of two days, the conference brought together 122 participants and featured 90 presentations across three parallel sessions. The wide range of contributions was linked by three keynote lectures delivered by Jeremy Knox of the University of Oxford, Teresa Cerratto-Pargman of Stockholm University and Mark Coeckelbergh of the University of Vienna. The programme also included a roundtable discussion moderated by Croatian sociologist Boris Jokić and featuring two members of the Croatian Parliament and a representative of the Swedish Internet Foundation.
In his keynote, “Postdigital Backlash: A ‘Holding to Account’”, Jeremy Knox examined primarily mass-media discourses that take a critical view of digital media. One of his central observations was that much media coverage refers to cognitive research on the effects of digital media, as illustrated by the Time headline “ChatGPT Is Eroding Critical Thinking”. In Knox’s interpretation of these discourses, the narrative of backlash frequently presents cognition itself as the fundamental problem, with the implicit demand that cognition should therefore be “improved”.
For Knox, however, this does not go far enough. Instead, the discourse must be redirected towards the technologies themselves. He argued that developing the ability to critically evaluate technological systems should be placed at the centre of both education and the debate surrounding the digital backlash. “The backlash is up for grabs”: at a time when the problems associated with technologies are increasingly being recognised, the task is to draw the appropriate critical conclusions from them.
Building on Simondon’s concept of the modes of existence of technical objects, Teresa Cerratto-Pargman’s keynote similarly questioned the perceived inevitability of technical objects, which have historically been understood primarily as tools. Cerratto-Pargman placed particular hope in slow-tech movements, low-tech practices and permacomputing. The aim, she argued, should be to use technological practices as a field of experimentation for creating a better future.
She presented three central propositions. First, the focus should shift from digital literacy towards “futures literacy”. Second, education should move from supporting and promoting individual learners towards fostering communal relationships. Third, the accumulation of technologies—the “banking model of technology-enhanced education”—should be replaced by the co-stewardship of postdigital education.
A further critical perspective, particularly concerning the consequences of artificial intelligence, was presented by Belgian philosopher of technology Mark Coeckelbergh. Coeckelbergh, who is himself a member of the UN Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, argued, among other things, that artificial intelligence threatens to undermine the fundamental foundations of democracy. Current developments in AI, he suggested, make a shift in education away from a focus on the labour market and towards an “education for democracy” more necessary than ever. Schools should become central spaces in which the capacity for critical judgement can be developed.
Tobias Conradi, a member of the Leibniz ScienceCampus Postdigital Participation Braunschweig, presented his paper as part of the panel “Postdigital Visions and Imaginaries”. In his presentation, entitled “Educational Media as Tools—and as Ideology”, Conradi examined the promises conveyed in promotional videos produced by Big Tech companies and their relationship to political demands concerning the use of media in school education.
Current debates indicate that Apple, Google and Microsoft have recognised calls for stronger protections for children and young people and have incorporated these concerns into their marketing. However, in response to public demands to restrict the use of digital devices, technology companies once again offer technical solutions—a form of technosolutionism. Rather than questioning the ubiquity of technology, the backlash thus produces additional layers of technological surveillance and encourages a shift away from liberal ideals of autonomy towards more repressive forms of social control.
