Faraway, so close: why the digital industry needs scholars and the other way around

European research on children’s internet use: Assessing the past and anticipating the future

“…As noted earlier, research and policy was developing in multiple ways around the world that cannot be encompassed here, but it is relevant to our account that in Europe, policy-makers and the public remained confident in the potential of formal education to stimulate opportunities, with awareness-raising used to support children and parents in a strongly self-regulatory policy context (which is not to say that such confidence was well-placed; see Macenaite, 2016). Hence research and policy attention was paid to children's agentic strategies of coping with online risk, as well as to independent evaluations of the technical means of supporting them (Donoso, Verdoodt, van Mechelen, & Jasmontaite, 2016. Also noteworthy, and far from commonplace in many countries, the arrival of the second age saw the researchers systematically invited to co-construct the research and policy agendas in tandem with the EC's Better Internet for Kids programme and its associated stakeholder groups.…”

“…At the same time, it foregrounds the ways in which children's lives are and have always been grounded in their family, school, community and other cultural contexts. Now that the Internet offers new pathways to outcomes for individuals, new social contexts ('digital ecologies') and new macro concerns ('technology provision and regulation'), new research is needed to guide policy and practice (Donoso et al, 2016). The second key change is to rebalance the earlier weighting towards online risks, with equal attention now to the opportunities of Internet use.…”

Designing Technologies with and for Youth: Traps of Privacy by Design

“…Examples include the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (European Parliament, 2016), the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act in the United States (Lievens & Verdoodt, 2018), and child-centred design guidelines, such as the list of 16 'standards of age-appropriate design' of the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO; Livingstone, 2019). Child-centred design guidelines are a good example of a knowledge dissemination format that can build a much-needed bridge between academia and practice (Donoso et al, 2016). It can also help to alleviate some of the difficulties implementing the data regulations into concrete design decisions that support young people's best interests (Dowthwaite et al, 2020;Lievens & Verdoodt, 2018).…”

“…Little is known, however, about the research efforts that feed into the design of new technologies and the role that young people (can/should) take in these efforts. This is a missed opportunity, as research insights should not only have societal value for policy-making, education, and parenting but also inform the design of new digital technologies (Donoso, Verdoodt, Van Mechelen, & Jasmontaite, 2016;Mainsah & Morrison, 2012). Research insights can form the basis for decisions on how to implement technical safeguards of data protection and adapt digital technologies to young people's needs, competencies, and expectations.…”

“Smart Things” in Child-Parent Interaction: Statement of Problem

“…The idea of the agency of children is articulated in the framework of new sociology of childhood in the 1990s and is expressed in the criticism of the psychological and pedagogical ideas of the universal nature of the child and the mandatory nature of the "normative" childhood. In this new concept, children are understood as experts in their lives; they are able to participate in solving issues relating to their daily lives and have the right to express their views [11,12,13,14]. Until recently, the asymmetry in the relations between children and adults was regulated by duties of the latter to perform a socialization function.…”