My experiences so far of the digitalisation in my own field of expertise
I currently work in child protection as a social advisor. My work aims to prevent out-of-home placements and to reduce the child-protection concerns affecting the life of a 12–17-year-old young person. My work always focuses on the entire family.
The impact of digitalisation on practical working methods appears mostly in everyday things, such as the use of WhatsApp. Client documentation is of course digital, but its usability still feels—to an end user—like something from the early 2000s. On the other hand, the slowness is increased by heavy information security requirements and the integration with the national health archive system (OmaKanta). I have often joked that impulse purchases would collapse if online stores had user interfaces as clumsy as the applications I use for client documentation.
My working approach includes extensive knowledge of youth culture due to my own interest in gaming and technology; this is, in essence, content I utilise professionally, and it originates directly from our digitalised society. Of course, when it comes to young people and families who need child protection services, digitalisation also presents challenges, such as screen time that negatively affects other areas of life and the risk of drifting into criminal online communities. The other side of the coin, however, includes low-threshold mental health mobile apps that support daily routines or the treatment of depression.
My studies in information science bring to mind the concept of the value chain of information: data – information – wisdom. In this course material there was discussion about the accumulation of data. In this value chain, data refers to numbers stored on a computer’s hard drive; information is that data transformed into a form that humans can understand—for example, when a computer converts stored numbers into graphics. Wisdom refers to a person’s ability to internalise the available information. I believe it is important to remember that data alone helps no one, and even information alone is not enough. Good data-driven management and development require the element of wisdom—how individuals are able to internalise and make sense of the information they receive.
The material included an example related to AI: the checkers-playing system that became better at the game than its creator. This made me reflect on child protection work. Could there someday be an AI system that supports the wellbeing of children in child protection—a system that becomes better than the human who designed it? At least when combined with the idea of intuitive AI described in the material, an AI that could recognise changes in a family over the course of several home visits could significantly strengthen early detection of risk situations. On the other hand, these thoughts quickly raise associations with a “big brother is watching” kind of world.
I have already used AI in my work to search for materials and tools for guidance work—for instance, when supporting a young person with selective mutism or when helping separated parents articulate sufficiently good parenting through facilitation methods.
Many of the presentations in the material were more than ten years old. This highlights how quickly technology seems to age.
I’ve commented on Joel’s (https://blogi.savonia.fi/joelhagstrom/2025/09/03/digi-society/) blog and on Henna’s blog (https://blogi.savonia.fi/hennamari/digi-society)