Behind the Reasons: The Relationship Between Adolescent and Young Adult Mental Health Risk Factors and Exposure to Season One of Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why

With increasing media choice, particularly through the rise of streaming services, it has become more important for empirical research to examine how youth decide which programs to view, particularly when the content focuses on difficult health topics such as suicide. The present study investigated why adolescents and young adults chose to view or not view season 1 of 13 Reasons Why and how individual-level variables related to adolescents’ and young adults’ viewing. Using survey data gathered from a sample of 1,100 adolescents and young adult viewers and non-viewers of the series in the United States, we examined how participants’ resilience, loneliness, and social anxiety related to whether participants viewed the first season or not. Our descriptive results indicate that adolescents who watched the show reported that it accurately depicted the social realities of their age group, they watched it because friends recommended it, and they found the subject matter to be interesting. Non-viewers reported that they chose not to view the show because the nature of the content was upsetting to them. In addition, results demonstrated that participants’ social anxiety and resilience related to participants’ viewing decisions, such that those with higher social anxiety and higher resilience were more likely to report watching season 1. Together, these data suggest that youth make intentional decisions about mental health-related media use in an attempt to choose content that is a good fit for based on individual characteristics

The datafication of childhood: examining children's and parent's data practices, children's right to privacy and parent's dilemmas

With an ever-growing use and variety of digital devices, most recently the Internet of Things, children’s and family privacy is an important topic with many under-researched aspects (Livingstone, Stoilova, Nandagiri, 2019). Although children and adolescents might be more likely to share greater amounts of personal information than adults, and to apply more lenient privacy settings on social media (Walrave, Vanwesenbeeck, & Heirman, 2012), studies have also shown that young people tend to care about their privacy (see e.g. boyd, 2014; Marwick & boyd, 2014). In this article, we examine “privacy concern” as a possible source of motivation for privacy protecting behaviors. According to the widely used Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory (Petronio, 2002, 2015), higher privacy concern leads to employing more restrictive privacy behaviors. Nonetheless, previous research has also identified the concept of “privacy paradox” (De Wolf cf. Acquisti & Gross, 2006; Hargittai & Marwick, 2016), which proposes that despite reported privacy concern, young people nonetheless disclose large amounts of information about themselves. A possible explanation is in the feeling of a lack of control in networked environments generating “apathy” and “cynicism” and the impression that “privacy violations are inevitable” (Hargittai & Marwick, 2016, p. 3752). We test the paradox by studying whether children who report greater privacy concern actually disclose more or less personal information about themselves; or otherwise engage in behaviors that might jeopardize their privacy (e.g. by using wearable devices and the Internet of Things, which might expose them to increased levels of data collection for commercial purposes). We further examine whether children whose parents or caregivers share significant amounts of information about them, and children who have experienced sharentingrelated breaches (such as being upset about what their parents have posted online) are more likely to be concerned about their privacy than other children. Following CPM, such breaches, which the theory terms as “turbulence” would lead to higher privacy concern. Finally, we also test whether children whose parents display higher levels of privacy concern tend to be more concerned about their privacy as well. We study these questions on a nationally representative sample of 9-17-year-old Internet using children from Norway and one of their parents/caregivers, conducted as part of the EU Kids Online project in 2018. As a case study, Norway is a country where the use of digital technology among youth is very high, as confirmed by the most recent analyses on nationally representative samples of children in 19 European countries; and so is exposure to risks (Smahel et al., 2020; Helsper et al., 2013). While children’s independent smartphone and social media use starts early, children also tend to enjoy significant family, social and policy-level support for safe digital media use, as compared to other European countries. With this in mind, we ask the following research questions: RQ1: What are the characteristics of children who report grater levels of concern for their privacy online and with digital technology? RQ1a: Are children with higher digital skills more worried about their privacy (because they are more aware of the dangers)? RQ1b: Are children who have experienced privacy or data-protection-related harms more likely to report privacy concerns? RQ2: What are the characteristics of families of children who report grater levels of concern for their privacy online and with digital technology? RQ2a: How are parental attitudes to privacy online and with digital technology related to children’s levels of concern for their privacy? RQ2b: What is the relationship between parental digital skills and children’s levels of concern for their privacy? RQ3: Do children who report higher privacy concern share more information about themselves online than children who report lower concern? RQ3a: Are children who report higher privacy concern less likely than other children to use wearable devices and the Internet of Things devices? Sampling and method This study relies on a nationally representative survey sample of Internet-using children in Norway. The data was collected between June and October 2018 within the EU Kids Online research project. 1001 children of both sexes, aged from 9 to 17 years, were interviewed via CASI method. The data was collected by Ipsos Mori. 47.1% of the sample was female, Mage= 13.3. The sampling frame was stratified by the economic characteristics of municipalities as well as the number of 9 to 17-year-old children who lived there. Respondents were initially recruited by telephone, followed by face-to-face interviews at home. Respondents’ anonymity and confidentiality were secured. The data collection was approved by the Norwegian national Data Authority (Datatilsynet), and followed procedures established by the National Ethical Committees for Social Science and Humanities and by the Norwegian Center for Research Data (NSD). Informed consent was obtained from each parent and each child that participated. Data analyses and initial results In order to verify determinants of higher levels of privacy concern in children and teenagers, we conducted a series of logistic regression analyses in the proportional odds model, controlling for child demographics and psychological characteristics. Findings indicate that privacy breaches such as sharenting, as well as general risk experiences significantly predict higher levels of privacy concern. Furthermore, children who declare having found themselves in a situation where they could use the privacyrelated advice (e.g. on sharing personal information online) are also more concerned about their privacy online. Additionally, parental level of privacy concern seems to have a modelling effect on a child’s attitude towards privacy online. Preliminary analyses into privacy paradox did not provide support for nor evidence against the effect

THE DATAFICATION OF CHILDHOOD: EXAMINING CHILDREN’S AND PARENTS’ DATA PRACTICES, CHILDREN’S RIGHT TO PRIVACY AND PARENTS’ DILEMMAS

In the age of continuous data collection and algorithmic predictions, children’s privacy seems threatened by the variety of surveillance and data practices in which parents, institutions, corporations and children themselves engage. The vast amount of data routinely collected about children as they grow up include data shared online, whether by children themselves (social media updates, web searches and browsing, data traces of their internet and smartphone use) or their parents (sharenting practices); data shared in the home, like conversations and environmental data captured by internet-connected devices such as smart speakers and internet connected toys; data shared outside the home, including educational and school apps, biometric data in schools and/or airports and stations, health data and medical records, geo-location apps or wearables, etc. Data can be knowingly shared with others, or “given off” as traces of online activities, and even inferred by algorithms that profile, classify and predict users’ behaviour. This panel on the datafication of childhood draws together a number of leading scholars in this area of research to explore questions and issues associated with children’s privacy online as both a protective and enabling right. The collection of papers in this panel contribute empirical data and theoretical insight on a range of relevant topics in the study of the datafication of childhood from the perspective of both children and parents. Based on qualitative and quantitative methods, the individual contributions to the panel illuminate the situated nature of data practices, their embeddedness in diverse contexts and practices of meaning-making through which children and parents negotiate online privacy