Key Takeaway
For children, the digital-media debate is moving beyond screen-time totals. The design of the content itself – pacing, sound, visual intensity and recommendation systems – increasingly shapes how attention is captured. In Georgia, where internet use among 6-14-year-olds was already 97.2% in 2025, the policy challenge is shifting from access to the quality of children’s digital experience.
Attention has become a business model
Digital platforms treat attention as an economic resource. The longer a user stays, the more opportunities exist to show advertising, recommend another video or deepen engagement. With children, that model deserves particular scrutiny because attention, self-regulation and information processing are still developing.
The Guardian’s September 17, 2026 long read focuses on a less-discussed feature of children’s media: pace. Researcher Natalia Kucirkova argues that children’s video has increasingly inherited the design logic of the adult attention economy – rapid cuts, constant stimulation and fewer quiet moments. That does not establish that every fast or colourful programme is harmful. A more defensible conclusion is that design can either give children time to process what they see or continuously push them toward the next stimulus.
What the latest evidence shows
Ofcom’s 2026 Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes report says 88% of children aged 3-7 and 99% of those aged 8-17 go online. In 2025, 91% of 4-15-year-olds watched some form of audiovisual content weekly, while 63% watched broadcast television weekly. According to calculations by BTU researchers, that is a 28-percentage-point gap. It is not a measure of algorithmic viewing by itself, but it illustrates how far children’s video consumption has moved beyond traditional television.
Ofcom also reports that video-sharing platforms account for the largest share of children’s in-home video viewing and that its qualitative research continues to observe a taste for fast-paced, “random” content. This is an important structural change: children are spending more of their media time in environments whose recommendation systems are designed to sustain engagement.
Why Georgia is already part of this debate
Georgia’s digital access is high enough that this is no longer a marginal issue. Geostat’s 2025 household ICT survey found that 97.2% of people aged 6-14 had used the internet in the previous three months, while 92.0% of households had internet access. Geostat published a new annual ICT release on September 2, 2026; the age-specific figure used here is explicitly the 2025 detailed result.
The Georgian challenge differs from that of large English-language markets. Local children have access to a virtually unlimited global supply of video, while high-quality Georgian-language children’s content is more constrained. Recommendation systems therefore shape not only how long a child watches, but also the language, cultural frame and tempo of what they watch.
From restriction to literacy by design
The policy response should not be a blanket rejection of digital media. Screens can support learning, creativity and communication. The more useful question is whether children understand how digital environments are designed and whether adults can help them pause, interpret and choose.
Georgia already has a foundation for this. The Communications Commission reported that media literacy was taught as a separate elective in 293 schools in 2025, more than 90% of them outside Tbilisi. The programme focuses on media language, information processing, disinformation and verification. The next step could be to introduce age-appropriate attention literacy earlier: what autoplay does, why feeds never end, how advertising is blended into entertainment and why a platform wants one more click.
International regulation is also beginning to focus on design. European Commission guidance under the Digital Services Act includes protection of minors from addictive design. The shift matters because policy is no longer concerned only with harmful content; it is increasingly concerned with the architecture that keeps children engaged.
Conclusion
For Georgia, the central issue is moving from connectivity to quality. When internet use among children is already close to universal, digital policy cannot stop at providing access. According to an assessment by BTU researchers, the next frontier is to protect the conditions under which children can think, pause and make meaning – not simply keep watching.
Data and Main Sources
The article draws on The Guardian, Ofcom, Geostat, the European Commission, the World Health Organization and the Communications Commission of Georgia. All dated figures are presented with their original reference period.
Prepared by the academic team of Business and Technology University and the BTUAI Research Team, Tbilisi, Georgia.