eLiom
Empowering critical minds in a digital world.
What is eLiom?
eLiom (eToday) is a youth-focused digital literacy initiative in rural Northern Lebanon dedicated to transforming how young people perceive and interact with their digital environments. Through emancipatory, hands-on learning techniques and dedicated research, we help students, parents, and educators critically navigate the attention economy and foster healthier digital wellbeing.
Founded by Peter Moussa, a digital communications specialist and researcher, and shaped alongside Nathalia Boutros, a clinical psychologist specializing in child mental health, eLiom unites strategic communication with developmental psychology to bridge the divide between tech design and young minds.
Our Journey So Far
The Foundation: Arts-Based Research
The concept of eLiom was sparked by a foundational master's thesis project exploring how 8-year-old children in Belgium and in Lebanon view the digital world. By utilizing arts-based research methods, we bypassed traditional surveys to capture the authentic, unfiltered voices and perspectives of kids navigating technology. This core research remains the guiding philosophy for all our current initiatives.
EMA International Poster Competition
Our foundational research was recognized on an international stage at the 18th General Assembly in Istanbul. In 2024, eLiom proudly won the EMA International Poster Competition, giving us a prominent platform to showcase our findings on children's digital perceptions to a global audience of professionals and advocates.
Understanding the Home Front: Parent Surveys & Focus Groups
To ensure our workshops address real-world challenges, we conducted comprehensive surveys with parents across Lebanon. By mapping out exactly how families currently manage technology and screen time at home, we gathered vital data to inform our future research and tailor our community workshops to the specific needs of both parents and children.
Building on our nationwide data, we traveled to Kobayat to host in-depth Focus Group Discussions with local parents. These sessions provided an intimate space for parents to share their candid concerns regarding their children's technology use, allowing us to deeply understand the community's anxieties and hopes surrounding digital integration.
Empowering Youth: Digital Literacy Workshops
To turn digital rights into everyday practice, eLiom delivers emancipatory, hands-on workshops in schools and scouting groups across Kobayat. Our flagship session, "Smart Scroll," is a 90-minute workshop designed for 12-year-olds that turns students into critical navigators of their feeds. Meeting teens where they are, we map their daily platform habits, demystify the attention economy where time and data serve as currency, and dissect persuasive design tactics like infinite scroll, slot-machine refresh loops, and the dopamine triggers fueling doomscrolling.
Through a tactile roleplay game titled "Be the Algorithm," students act as Users, Creators, and Recommendation Engines to reverse-engineer how platforms optimize for screen time. The goal is not digital bans, but genuine agency: enabling youth to make technology serve their growth rather than corporate metrics.
Bridging the Gap: Bread&Net Beirut
We brought our mission to the tech community by hosting a specialized workshop at Bread&Net Beirut. This session challenged technology experts, developers, and digital rights advocates to recognize the stark contrast between how they design the digital world and how children actually perceive it, fostering a dialogue on creating more youth-conscious tech.
