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Advocates of digital education have increasingly recognized the need for young people to acquire digital media literacy. However, this idea is often seen in instrumental terms, and is rarely implemented in any coherent or comprehensive way. This paper suggests that we need to move beyond a binary view of digital media as offering risks and opportunities for young people, and the narrow ideas of digital skills and internet safety to which it gives rise. The article proposes that we should take a broader and more critical approach to the rise of 'digital capitalism', and to the ubiquity of digital media in everyday life. In this sense, the paper argues that the well-established conceptual framework and pedagogical strategies of media education can and should be extended to meet the new challenges posed by digital and social media. This article presents some reflections as an epigraph of the special issue "Digital learning: distraction or default for the future", whose final result has allowed us to group a set of critical research and analysis on the inclusion of digital technologies in educational contexts. The points of view presented in this epigraph are also developed in more detail in the book "The Media Education Manifesto" (Buckingham, 2019).

Capsule: In a 461 km2 unenclosed upland landscape in south-west England, long-term breeding Whinchat Saxicola rubetra persistence is more likely in areas characterized by a mixture of Bracken Pteridium aquilinum, ericaceous vegetation, and very low tree densities, situated in steep-sided valleys at mid-altitudes, further from agriculturally improved grassland or arable. Aims: To establish the correlates of Whinchat breeding territory retention between 1979 and 2015–2022 in a declining upland population. Methods: Historical Whinchat territories (identified in 1979) were revisited to assess range occupancy, producing a lost (n = 104) and retained (n = 60) sample. Territory retention probability was modelled at local (100 × 100 m) and broad (500 × 500 m) scales against remotely sensed data and field habitat data measured in 2022. Results: At the local scale, territory retention probability was greater in steeper valleys, further from arable or agriculturally improved grassland, peaked at five trees per ha in a quadratic response, and where Bracken cover was greater. Bracken cover effects were enhanced when ericaceous vegetation was also present. At the broad scale, retention probability was again greater in steeper valleys, with greater Bracken cover, and at very low tree densities in a quadratic response (but the latter was not important at the bottom of steep-sided valleys). Retention also peaked at around 350–400 m elevation in a quadratic response at the broad scale. Conclusions: In this population in south-west England, steep-sided valleys at 350–400 m, with a light scattering of trees, situated further from intensive enclosed farmland are more likely to retain Whinchats long term. Within these areas, a mixed Bracken and ericaceous field-layer should be encouraged, and blanket afforestation avoided, although lower densities of native trees appear to be more tolerated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]