Why Digital Play Matters
Digital play is shaping childhoods worldwide. Children are growing up immersed in interactive technology — games, apps, and online experiences that influence how they learn, communicate, and see themselves in the world.
When well-being is built into the design of these experiences, digital play can help children grow with confidence, creativity, and care. When it is not, the risks are real: anxiety, distraction, and disengagement.
The challenge is that child-centred design does not happen by accident. It requires intentional choices from the people and organisations building these tools.
What is RITEC?
UNICEF's Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) is a global initiative that works to embed children's well-being into the design and development of digital technology. After years of building evidence-based research and practical frameworks, RITEC is now entering an important new phase — moving from knowledge creation into real-world practice.
This means actively supporting designers, companies, and educators to apply what the research shows: that the design decisions made early in a product's life have a profound and lasting impact on the children who use it.
RITEC's approach is grounded in the idea that technology for children should not simply be safe. It should be actively beneficial — designed to nurture curiosity, support emotional wellbeing, encourage creativity, and build positive social skills.
Partners in Practice
RITEC's new phase brings together a powerful group of organisations committed to turning research into action:
- 🧱 The LEGO Foundation — champions learning through play as a fundamental right of childhood
- 🧩 The LEGO Group — one of the world's most recognised creators of purposeful play experiences
- 📺 The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop — decades of expertise in educational media for young children
- 🎮 Games for Change — a global leader in games and immersive experiences designed for social impact
Together, these partners are working to ensure that the people building digital experiences for children have the tools, the knowledge, and the confidence to make choices that genuinely serve young people.
Design With Purpose
At the heart of RITEC is a deceptively simple idea: the best digital experiences for children start with children's needs.
This means asking different questions during the design process:
- Does this experience build confidence or create comparison?
- Does it encourage curiosity or passive consumption?
- Does it support connection or isolation?
- Is it designed to serve the child — or to capture the child's attention?
When designers and developers ask these questions from the very beginning, the results look fundamentally different. RITEC provides the frameworks and practical guidance to help them do exactly that.
What This Means for Educators
For teachers and school leaders, the RITEC initiative is an important reminder that not all digital tools are created equal. When selecting technology for classrooms and learning environments, it is worth asking whether the platform was built with children's wellbeing genuinely in mind.
At Can Do Kids Worldwide, this is something we think about deeply. Our platform is designed to nurture children's natural curiosity about the world — to make learning about other cultures, languages, and places feel exciting, meaningful, and safe. The Can Do Kids Band characters model respect, empathy, and a genuine love of exploration, helping children build the kind of global mindset they will carry with them throughout life.
We believe that digital play — when it is purposefully designed — can be one of the most powerful tools for building confident, caring, globally aware children. That is why initiatives like RITEC matter, and why we follow them closely.
Learn More
To read more about UNICEF RITEC and how they are working to bring children's well-being into everyday digital design, visit the UNICEF RITEC initiative.
Explore how Can Do Kids Worldwide builds purposeful digital learning experiences for primary-age students:
Classroom Activity Idea
Have students explore a country from the Can Do Kids Worldwide globe and share 3 interesting facts they discover about its culture, geography, or people.
Extension: Students create a simple drawing or write a short paragraph about what they learned and present it to the class.