Who hasn't heard grandparents say something like: back in my days, life was simpler, better, safer. That's probably—kinda—true. But as time goes by, looking back, even one generation has to take into consideration the technology variable.

It is all another story—this one, to be exact.

In this Audio Signals episode, we talk with Sonia Livingstone, a professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Sonia has published 20 books on media audiences, especially children and young people's risks and opportunities, media literacy, and rights in the digital environment, including The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age.

Nowadays, we point fingers at parents too quickly for not really knowing how to introduce and manage their children's technology consumption. Why are technology education classes missing in school, and how are parents supposed to figure this all out on their own? This question can also be summarized by "Who is educating the educators?"

For generations, our society could count on learning from the past how to educate children about specific topics laid in the past experience that parents and grandparents had. Still, once you place the technology variable in the equation, the formula doesn't hold anymore. There are unknowns, exponential changes, and a future that all of a sudden is already here. What was once local has become global. And, there is a generational gap, and we have to figure out how to fill it ASAP.

In "Parenting for a Digital Future, How Hopes and Fears about Technology Shape Children's Lives"

Sonia Livingstone discusses this and much more, and we talk about it right here in this podcast.

How parents' hopes and fears about technology shape their children's lives? Taking a comparative, critical, and contextualized approach, her research examines how mediation's changing conditions are reshaping everyday practices and possibilities for action.

ABOUT THE BOOK In the decades it takes to bring up a child, parents face challenges that are both helped and hindered by the fact that they are living through a period of unprecedented digital innovation.

In Parenting for a Digital Future, Sonia Livingstone and Alicia Blum-Ross draw on extensive and diverse qualitative and quantitative research with a range of parents in the UK to reveal how digital technologies characterize parenting in late modernity, as parents determine how to forge new territory with little precedent or support.

They chart how parents often enact authority and values through digital technologies since "screen time," games, and social media have become both ways of being together and of setting boundaries. Parenting for a Digital Future moves beyond the panicky headlines to offer a deeply researched exploration of what it means to parent in a period of significant social and technological change.

Enjoy, share, and think about it.

Guest Sonia Livingstone, Professor of Social Psychology, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics (@Livingstone_S on Twitter)

This Episode’s Sponsors

Nintex: https://itspm.ag/itspntweb

Blue Lava: https://itspm.ag/blue-lava-w2qs

Resources

Children’s Rights in the Digital AgeDigital Futures CommissionChildren Online: Research & Evidence (CO:RE)ySKILLS (YouthSkills)The Nurture NetworkGlobal Kids Online For more podcast stories from Audio Signals: https://www.itspmagazine.com/audio-signals

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