Stop criticising parents and start supporting their digital practices
Society has high hopes and considerable fears for the digital future. On the one hand, parents are told – get your children coding so they have the digital skills needed for a competitive future. On the other hand, they are old - millions of jobs will be lost to digital ...more
Learning from parents who are confident about raising digital kids
Parents are full of questions about the digital future: What’s good or bad technology? What helps or hinders their child and when? These are not easy questions to answer, and our society is struggling with them. Following her TED Talk and Good Thinking podcast, Professor Sonia Livingstone discusses the evolution of parental ...more
Digital by default: the new normal of family life under COVID-19
Sonia Livingstone discusses the potential consequences of families’ reliance on technology during the COVID-19 crisis. She concludes that life under lockdown has the potential to either hasten a digital future in which our lives are tracked and monetised in unprecedented ways, or make the public more aware of such risks ...more
EU Kids Online 2020 finds more risk to children online, but not always more harm
For Safer Internet Day 2020, a new report, EU Kids Online 2020: Survey results from 19 countries, has mapped the risks and opportunities of the internet for children in Europe. For the report, researchers from the EU Kids Online network collaborated between autumn 2017 and summer 2019 to conduct a major ...more
What we learned from studying makerspaces – implications for policy
Previously we’ve shared some of our findings from our research with parents, educators, and children while we visited hands-on makerspaces through the San Francisco Bay Area as part of the Horizon 2020 funded international research project Makerspaces in Early Years (MakEY). To bring this series of posts to a close, we ...more
What motivates 'tech-free' Silicon Valley parents to enrol their children in makerspaces?
In the third of four posts presenting findings from the Makerspaces in the early years (MakEY) final report, Sonia Livingstone, Alicia Blum-Ross, and Paige Mustain discuss why, despite claims of “tech-free” parenting among tech-elite parents, they are eager to benefit from makerspaces provided for young children. There has been a rising trend among tech elites of ...more
Data and privacy in the digital age: from evidence to policy
What do children know, and want to know, about where their data goes? The Children’s Data and Privacy Online project, funded by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), recently launched its final report and an online privacy toolkit at a multistakeholder seminar at LSE. LSE’s Gianfranco Polizzi and Professor Sonia Livingstone explain the project’s key research findings and recommendations. We ...more
Educators and parents – working together to support children’s learning in makerspaces
In the second of four posts presenting findings from the Makerspaces in the early years (MakEY) final report, Sonia Livingstone, Alicia Blum-Ross, and Paige Mustain investigate how educators view parents roles within these spaces, and how the physical set up of the spaces encourage parents' interaction. In our previous post wrapping up our findings from the ...more
What’s the role of the school in educating children in a datafied society?
In today’s increasingly datafied and society, there is mounting pressure on schools to teach children about online privacy and safety. Yet the rapid pace of technological development, and limited opportunities for in-service training means this is often a daunting task for teachers. In this post, Sonia Livingstone, Mariya Stoilova and Rishita Nandagiri, describe ...more
Children’s expectations regarding fair treatment of their personal data: what policy makers should know
The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office is in the process of putting together an age-appropriate design code, which will outline the standards that providers of online services which process personal data and are likely to be accessed by children will be expected to meet. Here, LSE’s Mariya Stoilova, Professor Sonia Livingstone and Rishita Nandagiri offer advice to ...more