US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy advises that "we are experiencing a youth mental health crisis." Based on the data, there's no question about that. Where there is a question is whether tech and media are the cause. Some scholars simply assert they are (see the sidebar below), but neither the surgeon general nor the American Psychological Association asserts that, and the APA just wrote in its … [Read more...] about Surgeon general’s advisory: Let’s take stock
Sonia Livingstone
Lawmakers, controlling and banning kids doesn’t help
The "control paradigm" around child online safety, which researchers on three continents have been calling out for at least five years, is in full bloom now. The term comes from a 2019 book by four Australian scholars about how control and surveillance have come to define digital safety, inclusion and citizenship. (Does that give you pause – especially around the citizenship piece?) Among … [Read more...] about Lawmakers, controlling and banning kids doesn’t help
Game-changer: Child rights-by-design
Even though the United States is the only country on the planet that hasn't ratified the nearly 34-year-old UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, US-based companies that serve kids and teens around the world no longer have any excuse not to uphold their rights. Why is that the case? Not "only" because young people's lives are now "digital by default," as psychology professor Sonia … [Read more...] about Game-changer: Child rights-by-design
Datafied Childhoods the book
A grabbier headline for this post might be “Screens are watching us back,” but that would be like so many scary news headlines parents are subjected to. More importantly, it wouldn’t do justice to all that this important new book – Datafied Childhoods, by Profs. Giovanna Mascheroni in Italy and Andra Siibak in Estonia – offers us. It provides…. Preparation not only for handling the new tech … [Read more...] about Datafied Childhoods the book
Powerful parenting for child safety online, offline
“The importance of a strong, positive relationship between a parent and child cannot be overstated. Reams of research has shown this to be true,” writes Prof. Justin Patchin of the Cyberbullying Research Center (CRC). And yet over the 20+-year-long public discussion about child online safety we’ve seen so little evidence – especially in news coverage and hearings on Capitol Hill – that all this … [Read more...] about Powerful parenting for child safety online, offline