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Sonia Livingstone

July 20th, 2018

Parenting for a Digital Future July 2018 roundup

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Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Sonia Livingstone

July 20th, 2018

Parenting for a Digital Future July 2018 roundup

0 comments

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

With summer holidays on the horizon, here’s our roundup of recent posts from the Parenting for a Digital Future blog. [Header image credit: P. Morris, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Privacy, safety and rights online

With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into force at the end of May, we asked how this will impact on children’s privacy and right to participate online, particularly given the fraught debates over the child’s age of consent. We also reflected on whether it will actually result in safer internet use for children across Europe’s multiple jurisdictions. Watch out for more on children’s privacy online and the GDPR in coming months.

Parenting for a Digital Future’s new national survey of UK parents also addressed child privacy and safety online issues, with a special focus in our third Parenting for a Digital Future Survey report, What do parents think and do about their children’s privacy online? We found that privacy is a top concern for parents, even though many report low privacy-supporting digital skills. On the blog, privacy was also discussed in relation to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. We presented practical solutions for parents to develop their ‘digital parenting’ skills and Brian O’Neill reported on prospects for a unified policy strategy for enhancing children’s internet use across Europe.

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Screen time: content, context and opportunity

Screen time is becoming an ever more significant issue, it seems. Our survey revealed that parents worry about the amount of time children spend looking at screens, even though it’s more the content children access that matters, and how they respond to it. Thus we questioned whether new government guidelines in Australia capture this shift in emphasis away from simple measures of screen time, and we reviewed two books which showed how engaging with screens can bring positive opportunities for children.

Family life and learning

How are families negotiating the digital age? Sonia Livingstone charted how digital media are opening up new opportunities for parents to support their children’s learning. We reviewed the evidence on how parents might help toddlers maximise the learning opportunities of touchscreen technology. Kate Miltner critically investigated the current push for parents and children to learn to code in the US. We examined how social class influences parents’ attitudes to their children’s use of social media in India and at how technology is used in Australian and UK schools, with the latter revealing how teenagers with visual impairments have used digital technology to improve their learning.

Evaluating risk

Comprehensive research in Latin America and Europe questioned whether increased access to online spaces results in more harm. Also researched was how teenage girls are harassed online and how we might empower girls to tackle this. We drew attention to the increased exposure of children to gambling via online advertising. Finally we contrasted two views on the media portrayal of suicide and the high-profile show, Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why.

Looking ahead we have plenty of posts lined up, but we are always keen to receive new contributions. Please take a look at our guidelines for guest contributors here and get in touch if you have an idea or some new research.

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This post gives the views of the authors and does not represent the position of the LSE Parenting for a Digital Future blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

 

 

 

 

About the author

Sonia Livingstone

Sonia Livingstone OBE is Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. Taking a comparative, critical and contextual approach, her research examines how the changing conditions of mediation are reshaping everyday practices and possibilities for action. She has published twenty books on media audiences, media literacy and media regulation, with a particular focus on the opportunities and risks of digital media use in the everyday lives of children and young people. Her most recent book is The class: living and learning in the digital age (2016, with Julian Sefton-Green). Sonia has advised the UK government, European Commission, European Parliament, Council of Europe and other national and international organisations on children’s rights, risks and safety in the digital age. She was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2014 'for services to children and child internet safety.' Sonia Livingstone is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, the British Psychological Society, the Royal Society for the Arts and fellow and past President of the International Communication Association (ICA). She has been visiting professor at the Universities of Bergen, Copenhagen, Harvard, Illinois, Milan, Oslo, Paris II, Pennsylvania, and Stockholm, and is on the editorial board of several leading journals. She is on the Executive Board of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, is a member of the Internet Watch Foundation’s Ethics Committee, is an Expert Advisor to the Council of Europe, and was recently Special Advisor to the House of Lords’ Select Committee on Communications, among other roles. Sonia has received many awards and honours, including honorary doctorates from the University of Montreal, Université Panthéon Assas, the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, the University of the Basque Country, and the University of Copenhagen. She is currently leading the project Global Kids Online (with UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti and EU Kids Online), researching children’s understanding of digital privacy (funded by the Information Commissioner’s Office) and writing a book with Alicia Blum-Ross called ‘Parenting for a Digital Future (Oxford University Press), among other research, impact and writing projects. Sonia is chairing LSE’s Truth, Trust and Technology Commission in 2017-2018, and participates in the European Commission-funded research networks, DigiLitEY and MakEY. She runs a blog called www.parenting.digital and contributes to the LSE’s Media Policy Project blog. Follow her on Twitter @Livingstone_S

Posted In: Reflections