In the age of smartphones, children worldwide are gaining access to social media earlier than ever before. In response, some states within the United States ...more

Can children develop digital resilience without first experiencing risky experiences online? And do risky online experiences always result in children becoming more digitally resilient afterwards? ...more

The nonconsensual sharing of sexual images via digital media is not an uncommon experience for some young people. For www.parenting.digital, Dr Emma Barker-Clarke discusses her ...more

“The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness”, a new book by Jonathan Haidt, quickly found an ...more

Mobile phones are currently banned in all Australian state schools and many Catholic and independent schools around the country. This is part of a ...more

There’s a tendency in popular discourse about social media and its impact on young people to lump all platforms together and talk about a single ...more

Following the recent UK AI Safety Summit at the beginning of November, LSE’s Gazal Shekhawat and Sonia Livingstone call attention to the interests of children in the global AI arms ...more

Families sharent – they share sensitive and identifying information about their children online. Parents might share photos of their children’s school sports day revealing their ...more

Algorithms and data-driven technologies are increasingly used in the public domain, despite unevenness in public trust, as many know from the UK’s A-levels algorithms fiasco. ...more

Sonia Livingstone was interviewed by Ashley McDermott, University of Michigan, for CaMP Anthropology. Ashley McDermott: Your work looks at how technology provokes anxieties in parents about ...more

From August 25th, the European Union is tightening its grip on large tech companies through the implementation of the Digital Services Act (DSA), a set ...more

More support and resources for parents, educators and caring adults are needed so they can help youth meet the challenges of growing up in the ...more

As governments grapple with balancing regulation and innovation in generative AI,  educational technologies (EdTech) are developed to bring AI directly into K12 classrooms.  The abundance ...more

Busy educators struggle to provide opportunities to support children with disabilities to thrive online. Yet investing time in relationships to enable sharing information and cultivating ...more

To mark Safer Internet Day, we are launching a good practice guide which highlights both the potential and actual consequences of online risks encountered by ...more

Young people’s online safety depends on dialogue with their carers, but children in foster care struggle to talk to their carers about sensitive topics such ...more

The beauty of childhood is its simplicity. A child’s years should be free from the responsibility and pressure that the transition into adulthood brings. This ...more

As a parent, even writing this title is uncomfortable. It is unlikely to sit comfortably with parents and carers, community actors such as teachers, social ...more

A quarter of UK young people aged 17 to 19 years who lived through lockdowns now have a probable mental disorder, according to new data ...more

Last week, London coroner Andrew Walker delivered his findings from the inquest into 14-year-old schoolgirl Molly Russell’s death, concluding she “died from an act of ...more

Recent research on digital inequalities has focused predominantly on the differences in internet use and digital competencies, while indirectly assuming that inequalities in access to ...more

The International Telecommunications Union World Telecommunication Development Conference drew to a close earlier this month. Convened in Kigali, Rwanda, the event called upon key stakeholders ...more

It’s estimated that by age 13, online ad companies have collected over 72 million pieces of information about each child.  If that fact doesn’t demonstrate ...more

Recent media coverage on the metaverse has cast doubts on child protection. A BBC News investigation and a Channel 4’s investigative documentary both discovered racist ...more

The Digital Futures Commission aims to make children’s best interests a primary consideration in the design of the digital environment. We keep a lookout for ...more

Social media has changed how families talk about adoption. Many hopeful adoptive parents turn to social media to find children available for adoption. Birth mothers ...more

David Souter, a tech governance consultant and researcher, writes here about the causes and implications of digital inequality, inspired by LSE Professor Ellen Helsper‘s book, ...more

Most European children today are living in media-rich households with access to a variety of different devices. Yet, there is a great variance in how ...more

Children have the right to play (Article 31, UNCRC) and this right applies in both physical and digital environments. However, the digital environment was not ...more

A report from the UK’s communications regulator Ofcom confirms children are avid social media users. Some 99% of children aged three to 17 used the ...more

While there is a long tradition of using digital ethnography to observe and understand youth spaces and cultures, the Covid-19 pandemic created a unique ...more

Much of what tweens and teenagers know about the Russia-Ukraine conflict comes from TikTok, Snapchat or Instagram. Their social media feeds contain images of tanks, ...more

As societies repeatedly raise concerns about the harmful outcomes of certain online experiences on young people’s wellbeing, one priority for research is to identify the ...more

Children and young people have long been expected to develop digital skills and knowledge relevant to the technologies of their time. During the 1980s this ...more

“Digital technology connects … physical and virtual spaces, creating both local and global digital playgrounds. Some of these spaces are designed with play in mind, ...more

In a recent BBC news investigation, a reporter posing as a 13-year-old girl in a virtual reality (VR) app was exposed to sexual content, racist ...more

In this blog, LSE Visiting Fellow Dr Velislava Hillman asserts that the newly proposed IEEE standards for an Age-Appropriate Digital Services Framework should be seen as a stepping ...more

The earliest lockdown in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, saw widespread disruption of in-person support for new parents, both formally ...more

Imagine school break time. Released from lessons, the children rush outside. They run, jump, shriek. There’s talking, laughter, whispered secrets. They group and regroup freely. ...more

Children generally find it easier to identify pre-roll ads on YouTube as advertising but some more covert marketing tricks like unboxing, YouTubers' recommendations and gaming ...more