THE FOUNDATION
Internet Independent Framework:
Emerging Digital Literacy for Early Years
The Early Years Extension: a pre-foundation layer of the Internet Independent Framework designed for children from ages 3 to 6.
OVERVIEW
About The Early Years Framework
This Early Years Extension is a pre-foundation layer of the Internet Independent Framework designed for children from ages 3 to 6. This framework does not attempt to teach digital safety in isolation, nor does it front-load complexity onto young learners. Instead, we recognise that the earliest and most durable foundations of cyber resilience are built through the same values and dispositions that early years educators already cultivate every day: kindness, help-seeking, emotional awareness, and the curiosity to ask questions about the world around them.
This extension was co-developed with Nita Mukesh Ambani Junior School’s (NMAJS) senior leadership team, educators, and stakeholders during a consultancy process in 2025–2026, incorporating teacher insights, classroom observations, and professional development data to ensure the framework is grounded in how this age group actually learns.
EARLY YEARS (AGES 3-6)
Emerging Digital Literacy
The Early Years Extension is organised around three topics, each addressing a distinct but connected dimension of digital life for young children. Each topic is grounded in what children at this age are already encountering. The framework gives educators the language and the progression structure to address these moments with intention.
Digital Conduct & Wellbeing
How young children learn to behave responsibly, treat others with kindness, and seek help from trusted adults when using technology.
Privacy & Personal Information
How children begin to understand what belongs to them in the digital world, including their image, their data, and the right to say no.
Media Awareness & Inquiry
How children develop the habit of pausing and questioning what they see on screens — distinguishing real from created, and noticing how content makes them feel.
HOW WE TEACH
Our Pedagogical Approach to Early Years
The Internet Independent Framework employs a transformative pedagogy that moves beyond traditional “digital citizenship” lessons to create lasting change at individual, classroom, and community levels. Rather than delivering isolated safety messages, the approach supports schools through culture shifts that embed digital safety into the fabric of school life.
The Early Years Extension applies and adapts this pedagogy for children from ages 3 to 6, with the following principles shaping how the framework is designed to be taught.
Design Principles
Inquiry Over Instruction
Children at this age learn by doing, noticing, and questioning. The language of this framework is inquiry-oriented: posing key questions, inviting children to notice and describe, and creating space for reflection. It does not deliver safety rules from the top down.
Developmental Appropriateness First
Outcomes are carefully scaffolded across three age bands. No concept is introduced before children have the cognitive and emotional readiness to receive it. The progression is deliberate: broad and embodied at ages 3–4, building to more explicit language and reasoning by ages 5–6.
Integrated, Not Siloed
These topics are designed to live across early years learning opportunities, such as circle time, play centres, library, units of inquiry, and social-emotional learning — not in a dedicated technology lesson alone. Digital literacy at this age is a disposition, not a subject.
GET IN TOUCH
Bring The Internet Independent Framework to Your Classrooms
The full documentation is available to partners under licence, with the scope, materials, and support to deliver it at scale. Get in touch to get the complete curriculum.