Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC)

Evidence shows that digital play can support children’s wellbeing by fostering creativity, autonomy, connection, and a sense of achievement. But these benefits are not automatic. They depend on how digital play experiences are designed. Without shared standards or intentional design choices, the same environments can undermine children’s safety, agency, and development. 

Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) is a global initiative led by UNICEF in partnership with the LEGO Foundation, the LEGO Group, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Games for Change to embed children’s wellbeing into everyday digital play design and development across the industry.

RITEC’s mission

RITEC began as a research effort to understand how digital play affects children’s well-being and which design choices matter most. This work led to the creation of the RITEC-8 framework and the RITEC Design Toolbox, providing practical guidance for designing digital play with children’s well-being in mind. 

RITEC now focuses on implementation, working with the digital play ecosystem to move from evidence-based research and tools to real-world practice. 

Through a new Community of Practice, targeted leadership engagement with senior decision-makers across the gaming ecosystem, and practical guidance, RITEC supports designers, companies, and educators in embedding children’s well-being-by-design into how digital play is designed and developed.  

How RITEC works

RITEC supports the ecosystem to:

• Design digital play experiences that protect children’s safety, security, and agency
• Build environments that support wellbeing rather than undermine it
• Align on shared responsibility across creators, publishers, studios, platforms, and educators
• Engage the global gaming industry in defining new standards for designing digital play for children