The internet of toys

With the rapid expansion in ‘smart’, interconnected toys, what is being done to regulate, for example, the data they generate? Giovanna Mascheroni looks into some of the hopes and concerns surrounding the internet of toys. Giovanna is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Università Cattolica, Milan and visiting fellow in the Department of Media and Communications at the LSE. She part of the EU Kids Online research team and of the COST Action DigiLitEY

Going online in the Asia Pacific region: challenges for parents

Giovanna Mascheroni summarises the findings from a workshop on policies and initatives for children’s safe internet use, held in September 2015, and outlines the challenges faced by parents in the Asia Pacific region. Giovanna is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Università Cattolica, Milan and visiting fellow in the Department of Media and Communications at the LSE. She part of the EU Kids Online research team and of the COST Action DigiLitEY

Perpetual contact as a communicative affordance: opportunities, constraints, and emotions

This paper draws on qualitative data collected as a part of a comparative study on children and teenagers’ uses of smartphones in nine European countries to explore the meanings and emotions associated with the enhanced possibility of “full-time” contact with peers provided by smartphones. It argues that full-time access to peers—which interviewees identify as the main consequence of smartphones and instant messaging apps on their interactions with friends—is a communicative affordance, that is, a set of socially constructed opportunities and constraints that frame possibilities of action by giving rise to a diversity of communicative practices, as well as contradictory feelings among young people: intimacy, proximity, security as well as anxiety, exclusion and obligation. Understanding the perceptions and emotions around the affordance of “anywhere, anytime” accessibility, therefore, helps in untangling how communicative affordances are individually perceived but also, and more importantly, socially appropriated, negotiated, legitimised, and institutionalised

The mobile internet: access, use, opportunities and divides among European children

Based on data collected through the Net Children Go Mobile survey of approximately 3500 respondents aged 9–16 years in seven European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Romania and the United Kingdom), this article examines the diffusion of smartphones among children and contributes to existing research on mobile digital divides by investigating what influences the adoption of smartphones among children and whether going online from a smartphone is associated with specific usage patterns, thus bridging or widening usage gaps. The findings suggest the resilience of digital inequalities among children, showing how social inequalities intersect with divides in access and result in disparities in online activities, with children who benefit from a greater autonomy of use and a longer online experience also reaching the top of the ladder of opportunities

Twisted Toys exposes how children’s data are exploited and their rights systematically violated online

“Welcome to the World of Twisted ToysTM, a wonderland of excitement, experiences and exploitation. We pride ourselves on making toys that are addictive, risky and put you completely under our control”. The claim that welcomes users on the website is intentionally creepy: Twisted Toys is not the latest collection of digital gadgets for kids. Rather, it is a campaign launched by the 5Rights Foundation to expose the surveillance, exploitation and risks of the digital world for children. For www.parenting.digital, Giovanna Mascheroni and Andra Siibak discuss how poor design, aggressive marketing strategies, and greedy datafication compromise children’s online experiences, agency and rights

Digital Literacies and Civic Literacies: Theoretical Issues, Research Questions and Methodological Approaches

Whether seen from a “minimalist” or a “maximalist” model of democratic participation, the issue of the role of the internet in facilitating citizens’ participation in the public sphere has acquired a permanent place in the academic and public debate. Particular attention has been devoted to young people and their engagement with the internet and digital media. While a consistent body of writing has focused on assessing the efficacy of online participation in mobilising young people and promoting new citizenship models, a different approach has addressed the issue from the perspective of media literacy, investigating the links between digital and civic literacies. This second strand of research is rooted in, while at the same time originating, the shift from media literacy to digital citizenship operated at a policy and public level. However, the very concept of media literacy is a contested one, as it is its stretching so as to include civic competencies. On these premises, the present papers aims to provide a critical review of the current debate on media and digital literacies framed as social practices, and to investigate the relationship between digital and civic literacies on a theoretical and empirically-driven level, in order to identify which dimensions of both digital and civic literacy should be studied, and how

Social networking among European children: new findings on privacy, identity and connection

Social networking is arguably the fastest growing online activity among youth people. This article presents new pan-European findings from the EU Kids Online project on how children and young people navigate the peer-to-peer networking possibilities afforded by social networking sites, based on a survey of around 25,000 children (1000 children in each of 25 countries). In all, 59 % of European 9-16 year olds who use the internet have their own social networking profile. Despite popular anxieties of lives lived indiscriminately in public, half have fewer than fifty contacts, most contacts are people already known to the child in person, and over two thirds have their profiles either private or partially private. The focus of the analysis, then, is to understand when and why some children seek wider circles of online contacts, and why some favour self-disclosure rather than privacy. Demographic differences among children, cultural factors across countries, and the specific affordances of social networking sites are all shown to make a difference in shaping the particularities of children’s online practices of privacy, identity and connection

“The Kids Hate It, but We Love It!”: Parents’ Reviews of Circle

The contribution aims to present a critical analysis of Circle—a screen time management and parental control device—through the lens of parental mediation, children’s surveillance, and children’s rights to online participation. Circle promises to sell parents peace of mind by allowing them to monitor their children’s online activities. In order to investigate how parents themselves understand Circle, we conducted a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of a sample of 154 parental reviews about the device on Amazon and Searchman by parents of children from early childhood to adolescence, with respect to perceived advantages and disadvantages of the device, parenting styles, and (the absence of) children’s voice and agency. Results suggest an ambivalent relationship between parents and the device. Most reviews adhere to the dominant discourses on ‘screen time,’ framing children’s ‘intimate surveillance’ as a good parenting practice, and emphasize the need for the ‘responsible parents’ to manage their children’s online experiences with the aid of Circle. Others, in turn, criticize the device for failing to enable fine grained monitoring, while few reported the device could dismiss children’s voice and cause conflicts in the households. Overall, findings suggest that parental control devices may promote restrictive mediation styles hindering children’s voice and their exploratory and participatory agency online

“Girls are addicted to likes so they post semi-naked selfies”: peer mediation, normativity and the construction of identity online

This paper examines how children aged 11-16 in three European countries (Italy, UK and Spain) develop and present their online identities, and their interactions with peers. It focuses on young people’s engagement with the construction of an online identity on social media through pictures, and explores how peer-mediated conventions of self-presentation are appropriated, legitimated, or resisted in pre-teens’ and teenagers’ discourses. In doing so, we draw on Goffman’s (1959) work on the presentation of self and “impression management” to frame our analysis. Mobile communication and social network sites serve an important role in the process of self-presentation and emancipation, providing “full-time” access to peers and peer culture. Our findings suggest that there are gender differences and the presence of sexual double standards in peer normative discourses. Girls are positioned as being more subjected to peer mediation and pressure. Boys blame girls for posing sexy in photos, and negatively sanction this behaviour as being aimed at increasing one’s popularity online or as an indicator of “a certain type of girl.” However, girls who post provocative photos chose to conform to a sexualised stereotype as a means of being socially accepted by peers. Moreover, they identify with the pressure to always look “perfect” in their online pictures. While cross-national variations do exist, this sexual double standard is observed in all three countries. These insights into current behaviours could be further developed to determine policy guidance for supporting young people as they learn to manage image laden social media

All digital skills are not all created equal, and teaching technical skills alone is problematic

Around the world governments encourage teaching in digital skills and literacies in the school curriculum and promote digital learning at home. The hope is that gaining digital skills will help implement e-government initiatives, foster civic participation, prepare young people for the ‘jobs of the future’, promote domestic adoption of digital consumer goods and services and enable citizens to locate and evaluate trustworthy information. These efforts vary hugely in their nature and goals, and it’s not clear if they actually work. In this blog, Sonia Livingstone, Giovanna Mascheroni and Mariya Stoilova discuss their new article arguing that what really matters to outcomes is the specific types of digital skills being gained