Discovering that a child knows more than we do about something usually produces pride: hearing a ten-year-old speak fluent English makes us feel that we are doing something right. However, when it comes to technology, pride is mixed in equal parts with uncertainty fueled in large part by the messages we receive all the time from the media. Cyberbullying, grooming, sexting, addiction, access to inappropriate content, seem to be part of a technological landscape that our minors inhabit with great familiarity without us being sure that they know how to deal with it.

Our reaction is understandable if we consider that the real digital divide - as far as skill technology is concerned - exists above all between parents and children. Not in vain, and from agreement with the study "The interactive generation in Spain", 70% of children between 10 and 18 years old recognized that they had learned to use the Internet alone. Our own lack of knowledge generates fear in a world that sometimes seems complex, cold and distant to us.

Let us not pretend to know more than our children in this area, but let us be aware that their knowledge is mainly instrumental. Although we may be fascinated by the agility with which they handle and control devices that seem transparent to them, it is important to note that the use they make of them is fundamentally reduced to meeting their immediate leisure and relationship needs. The risk of endogamy is real in a hyperconnected scenario where they end up always talking to the same people, online and offline, about the things that matter to them today and now. A few weeks ago I was able to see first hand how among a group of 80 teenage twitter heavy users no one knew about the "Arab Spring" phenomenon, nor the role that this social network had played in it.

Discovering the educational opportunities and gauging the risks involved in the use of ICTs is a task that cannot be undertaken without our participation. Only with an overall, medium and long term vision deadline, which minors lack due to their age, is it possible to understand the true potential of technology.

The educational task, which always aims beyond the concrete, allows us to look at ICTs as tools that we must learn to use well. It is our opportunity to find a "blue ocean" where we do not compete with their skills, but add our own.