How parents of young children manage digital devices at home: the role of income, education and parental style

The main focus of this report is on the role of parental education and household income. Together, these factors capture a major source of difference and inequality across households: hence we ask, how do they shape parental mediation of digital media? For policy-makers and practitioners, it is important to learn whether a generic approach to parental advice and awareness-raising is sufficient, or whether tailored guidance would be more effective for the different target groups of parents being addressed

'Happy Onlife' - A video game to support mediation on internet risks and opportunities

Children and young people are very active users of digital technology from an early age. Recent research shows that children learn quickly from mirroring the behaviour of parents, of older siblings and peers. On one hand, children have acquired independency and skills within the digital world; on the other, they lack reflective and critical thinking as well as awareness about opportunities and risks such as cyber-bullying or digital identity theft. Active adult’s mediation would allow for the integration of values and critical thinking but so far, adults seem poor active mediators and in need of practical tools of empowerment. Therefore, we developed Happy Onlife, a game to support players towards a happy online life. This interactive video game aims at empowering teachers and parents to actively guide children to become smarter, responsible, and respectful when using digital media. We chose an experimental and empirical approach and the design of the game repeatedly undertook the elicitation, representation and validation steps. Happy Onlife presents key messages about children's use, overuse, and risks of misuse of digital technologies and provides simple and clear strategies of prevention, mediation or remediation. Tests beds have proved the efficiency of the video game’s questions to prompt discussion between generations and drives the players towards a responsible and safe digital media use. Happy Onlife can be considered as an effective tool to support adults’ mediation to children for a healthy and safe internet and digital technology use.JRC.G.6-Digital Citizen Securit

How parents of little children manage digital devices at home

Despite being often ambivalent regarding the potential benefits and risks of digital media, parents begin thinking about, and finding ways to manage, the digital media use of their children when they are very young. Partly, they act out of already-established styles of parenting and family values, extending these to ICT uses at home as soon as these begin. Partly, they are already mediating the activities of their older children, and they adjust their approach to include their younger children. Partly, they are led to intervene when they see their young children respond to digital devices in ways that worry them (spending too long on one activity, staring at the screen, behaving badly when the device is taken away, etc.). However, their good intentions are often hindered by a host of everyday life practicalities. Families of different socio-economic background and education differed in their parenting styles, supporting Clark’s distinction between poorer/less educated families endorsing an ‘ethic of respectful connectedness’ and wealthier/more educated families endorsing an ‘ethic of expressive empowerment’. This was found to translate loosely – with many exceptions – into restrictive and active strategies of ICT mediation. The relationship between parenting style and parental regulation of digital devices is however mediated by parents’ own familiarity with ICT. Across all the family types, when parents had particular expertise in ICT, because of work or interests, they were more confident of managing their children’s ICT activities and more engaged in them. For all parents, but especially those who lack confidence, experience or expertise in relation to ICTs, the study revealed a need for policy and practitioner support in relation to: The benefits of internet use (e.g. recommended imaginative or educational sites and apps). The risks of internet use (e.g. commercial risks or non-appropriate age content). The use of technical tools to manage children’s internet use (e.g. safety settings, passwords, privacy protection and content filters). Communication strategies to facilitate shared activities using digital devices and parent-child discussions about preferred values and practices and how to address problems.JRC.G.6-Digital Citizen Securit

Accurate detection of typical absence seizures in adults and children using a two-channel electroencephalographic wearable behind the ears

Objective: Patients with absence epilepsy sensitivity <10% of their absences. The clinical gold standard to assess absence epilepsy is a 24-h electroencephalographic (EEG) recording, which is expensive, obtrusive, and time-consuming to review. We aimed to (1) investigate the performance of an unobtrusive, two-channel behind-the-ear EEG-based wearable, the Sensor Dot (SD), to detect typical absences in adults and children; and (2) develop a sensitive patient-specific absence seizure detection algorithm to reduce the review time of the recordings. Methods: We recruited 12 patients (median age = 21 years, range = 8–50; seven female) who were admitted to the epilepsy monitoring units of University Hospitals Leuven for a 24-h 25-channel video-EEG recording to assess their refractory typical absences. Four additional behind-the-ear electrodes were attached for concomitant recording with the SD. Typical absences were defined as 3-Hz spike-and-wave discharges on EEG, lasting 3 s or longer. Seizures on SD were blindly annotated on the full recording and on the algorithm-labeled file and consequently compared to 25-channel EEG annotations. Patients or caregivers were asked to keep a seizure diary. Performance of the SD and seizure diary were measured using the F1 score. Results: We concomitantly recorded 284 absences on video-EEG and SD. Our absence detection algorithm had a sensitivity of.983 and false positives per hour rate of.9138. Blind reading of full SD data resulted in sensitivity of.81, precision of.89, and F1 score of.73, whereas review of the algorithm-labeled files resulted in scores of.83,89, and.87, respectively. Patient self-reporting gave sensitivity of.08, precision of 1.00, and F1 score of.15. Significance: Using the wearable SD, epileptologists were able to reliably detect typical absence seizures. Our automated absence detection algorithm reduced the review time of a 24-h recording from 1-2 h to around 5–10 min.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe