Sonia Livingstone

London School of Economics and Political Science | LSE · Department of Media and Communications

Children need, and have the right to, privacy and heightened data protection. Privacy enables autonomy and growth and is undermined by excessive scrutiny or lack of respect for children's agency in sharing personal information. Through case studies of parents, schools, health services, and commerce, we examine US and UK policy regarding children’s...

Age assurance is a way to prevent children accessing content, products or services that are potentially harmful to them, ranging from gambling services or alcohol or tobacco or, increasingly, certain products and services online. Now that children’s lives are mediated by digital technologies, policymakers are deliberating over the legal, technical...

Introduction The impact of digital activity on adolescent mental health has been difficult to assess because of methodological limitations and a lack of strong theory. Dynamic Interplay of Online Risk and Resilience in Adolescence (DIORA) is a longitudinal study designed to address these core limitations and tease apart the reciprocal influences li...

To explore ‘what good looks like’ for children’s play in a digital world,the Digital Futures Commission consulted children, companies, policy makers, regulators and academics. Responding to public scepticism that play online could match the benefits of traditional free play, our research compared insights from play in non-digital and digital contex...

Digital technology use (i.e. digital activity) has been proposed to contribute to a decline in adolescents’ mental health. We present a new model of how risky digital activity may increase depressed mood via reciprocal pathways, creating negative developmental cycles. Specifically, we hypothesize that risky digital activity increases depressed mood...

This article advances the unfolding research agenda on families, relationships and societies in the so-called ‘platform society’ by applying both a relational lens and a multigenerational approach. Our scoping review of the multidisciplinary research literature revealed two main themes linking relationality and digital platforms: (1) the intensific...

Children have the right to play (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989), yet their opportunities to play on their own terms (free play) are under pressure, including online. Drawing on an analysis of the qualities of children’s free play across time and cultures, a nationally representative survey of UK 6- to 17-year olds compared their ex...

For too long, child rights advocates knew little about the internet while internet governance experts knew little about children’s rights. In March 2021, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) adopted General Comment 25 (GC25) on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment. A General Comment is an authoritative document whic...

Internet and social media use can be both beneficial and harmful for vulnerable youth, offering support and increased self-knowledge, but also exposure to adverse content. Research on the critical question of what makes a difference between the digital pathways to wellbeing or harm is minimal. However, there is some indication that how adolescents...

Digital technologies now mediate most, if not all, aspects of children’s lives from learning to lunching, playing, staying connected and building relationships with friends and family. However, the same cannot be said about children’s best interests in the design and operation of today’s digital environment. This paper analyses 52 products and serv...

A socio-legal analysis of the UK governance regime for data collected from children at school for teaching and learning contrasts the government-mandated data collection by schools to inform educational policy and planning with data processed and shared with third parties by commercial EdTech providers. We find the former is effectively governed by...

Should academics collaborate with social media and gaming companies to identify and reduce mental health impacts on children and young people? While opinions on this question sharply diverge within the academic community, in practice collaboration is already widespread. As digital platforms increasingly dominate the time and attention of many young...

Background Published systematic reviews provide evidence linking positive and negative digital experiences to adolescent mental health. However, these reviews focus on the general public rather than the digital experiences of adolescents with different pre‐existing mental health conditions and so may be limited in their clinical relevance. We revie...

There is growing public and expert concern that young people’s digital activities on the internet may worsen their mental health, although the research literature remains contested. This report investigates whether gaining digital skills makes a difference to improving young people’s wellbeing outcomes. As well as drawing on the burgeoning literatu...

Research and policy have invested in the prospect that gaining digital skills enhances children’s and young people’s outcomes. A systematic evidence review of research on digital skills among 12- to 17-year-olds identified 34 studies that used cross-sectional survey methods to examine the association of digital skills with tangible outcomes. Two-th...

Risk classifications guide practitioners and policymakers in their work and in communicating their results. It is timely to update risk classifications, given the variation in their use, the emerging risks in the digital environment, and our growing understanding of children’s experiences of online risks of harm. This report proposes a new CO:RE 4C...

Digital technologies are exerting a growing influence on the lives of children and teenagers: from video monitoring of babies and educational robots in nursery school to AI-powered learning assistants used to guarantee individual success in education. However, issues relating to privacy, surveillance and data protection are seldom reflected on with...

Children’s digital access – or lack thereof – during the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly determined whether children can continue their education, seek information, stay in touch with friends and family, and enjoy digital entertainment. With over 1.5 billion children across 190 countries confined to their homes, active video games or dance vide...

Given the considerable policy and practical importance of digital skills and literacies for young people’s life chances, especially as regards inequalities and digital inclusion, and the increasing reliance on digital technologies for learning, employment and civic life, a systematic evidence review was conducted to answer this question. The review...

What actors and factors shape children and young people’s digital skills? And how do their digital skills impact the rest of their lives? These are the two research questions addressed in this paper, along with an analysis of how the research literature to date has measured digital skills. The findings reported here come from a systematic evidence...

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 chi...

How do children understand the privacy implications of the contemporary digital environment? This question is pressing as technologies transform children’s lives into data which is recorded, tracked, aggregated, analysed and monetized. This article takes a child-centred, qualitative approach to charting the nature and limits of children’s understan...

This chapter draws on the project “Children's data and privacy online: growing up in a digital age”, funded by the UK's data protection authority. It takes a child‐centered approach, prioritizing children's voices, experiences, and rights within a wider framework of evidence‐based policy development. Children's digital literacy plays an important p...

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. Drawing on extensive research with parents both rich and poor, parenting toddlers to teenagers, this book reveals how digital technologies give parenting strugg...

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. Drawing on extensive research with parents both rich and poor, parenting toddlers to teenagers, this book reveals how digital technologies give parenting strugg...

Background Evidence on whether the amount of time children spend online affects their mental health is mixed. There may be both benefits and risks. Yet, almost all published research on this topic is from high‐income countries. This paper presents new findings across four countries of varying wealth. Methods We analyse data gathered through the Gl...

Two developments in recent decades – the rising attention to children’s rights, and the growing importance of the digital environment – seem on a collision course, with children’s rights arguably more infringed than benefited by the digital world, and with efforts to promote children’s rights in a digital world seen by some as threatening the freed...

Two developments in recent decades – the rising attention to children’s rights, and the growing importance of the digital environment – seem on a collision course, with children’s rights arguably more infringed than benefited by the digital world, and with efforts to promote children’s rights in a digital world seen by some as threatening the freed...

This report presents the findings from a survey of children aged 9–16 from 19 European countries. The data were collected between autumn 2017 and summer 2019 from 25,101 children by national teams from the EU Kids Online network. A theoretical model and a common methodology to guide this work was developed during four phases of the network’s work,...

In understanding and promoting positive outcomes for children’s internet use, media and information literacies play a crucial mediating role, by enabling opportunities to learn, create, express oneself and participate, and by facilitating coping and building resilience. This chapter explains the approach taken by Global Kids Online (GKO), a multina...

There is a crisis of trust in information. Technology offers unprecedented potential to support informed debate and decision-making, but the threats to reliable information and a healthy public debate are growing. Politicians, regulators, platforms, news media and campaigners are responding, with mixed motives and uncertain results. While most shar...

How do parents and carers approach the task of bringing up their children in the digital age? What is their vision of their children’s future and that of the wider society? Most importantly, how are parental expectations, and expectations of parents, designed into learning opportunities for children, if at all? In this article, our focus is on how...

This book examines social media companies’ policies against cyberbullying or digital bullying in the context of children and youth. It bases its arguments upon an analysis of written corporate documents of fourteen major social media companies including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and Ask.fm, among others, and interviews with so...

Privacy is both a protective and an enabling right. This article identifies the available research on how children understand, value and negotiate their personal data and privacy online. The results are interpreted according to a framework that distinguishes different privacy contexts (interpersonal, institutional and commercial) and data types (gi...

This article considers the challenges of conducting global research in a domain characterised by intense socio-technological change, complex ethical issues and contested policy choices. The domain chosen is that of children’s rights in the digital environment, which poses challenges to policymakers regarding children’s protection, empowerment and w...

Despite pervasive messaging about the dangers of "screen time," children and families remain avid consumers of digital media and other technologies. Given competing narratives heralding the promise or the peril of children's technology, how can designers best serve this audience? In this panel, we bring together world experts from: children's media...

Spyware and viruses are the most common data protection problem for the surveyed children. While relatively few children report to have lost money by being cheated on the Internet (between 2% and 5%), these numbers have slightly increased when compared to 2010. Between 3% and 10% of the children say they spent too much money on in-app purchases or...

Digital technologies have reshaped children’s lives, resulting in new opportunities for and risks to their well-being and rights. This chapter investigates the impact of digital technologies on children’s rights through the lens of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Up until now, not all rights have received the same level of...

This article critically examines how fears of audience gullibility, ignorance, and exploitation impede media studies’ response to the pressing challenges posed by the growing power of social media platforms and their innovative datafication practices. I revisit the history of audience research to show how empirical findings contested the pejorative...

There is currently a lack of guidance for both parents and health professionals regarding screen time and the use of digital devices by 0- to 5-year-olds, despite rising concerns among health visitors. In a context of increasing reliance on digital technologies, public anxiety about the still-uncertain outcomes for children, and a policy debate tha...

This chapter argues that, while parenting has always been inherently future-oriented and, therefore highly uncertain, the conditions of reflexive modernity amplify and individualize the burden of risk such that parents become increasingly anxious both because of their uncertain and risky task and also because of the judgments of others. Based on de...

Este artigo procura entender como, em uma sociedade fortemente mediatizada, se tece um “fio digital” através da vida pessoal, social e de aprendizagem de jovens. Para tanto, foi realizada uma etnografia com alunos de 13 a 14 anos de idade, durante um ano. Foram reveladas as formas interligadas de mídia digital da qual os jovens se apropriam para en...

Much has been said about the future of public service content, the growth of multiple platforms, new market and regulatory pressures, and changing audience preferences and practices, among other widely debated topics. However, little attention has been paid to the role that public service television plays in educating, entertaining, and broadening...

In development agendas regarding children in low income communities, both older and emerging media are typically ignored, taken for granted or assumed to have beneficial powers that will redress social and gender inequality. Taking the field of ICT for Development (ICT4D) as a subfield of communication for development, we build on a recent rapid ev...

Digital technologies have reshaped children’s lives, resulting in new opportunities for and risks to their well-being and rights. This chapter investigates the impact of digital technologies on children’s rights through the lens of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Up until now, not all rights have received the same level of...

This chapter reports on a study conducted in seven countries in which young children’s (aged under 8) digital practices in the home were examined. The study explored family practices with regard to access to and use of technologies, tracing the ways in which families managed risks and opportunities. Seventy families participated in the study, and i...

In development agendas regarding children in low-income communities, both older and emerging media are typically ignored or assumed to have beneficial powers that will redress social and gender inequality. This article builds on a recent rapid evidence review on adolescents’ digital media use and development interventions in low- and middle-income...

This case presents the Global Kids Online research model, revealing the challenges of researching children’s internet and mobile use in a global context, and providing practical methodological solutions. With most available research conducted in the global North while most growth in the population of young internet users is occurring in the global...

Book synopsis: Los trabajos de este libro reúnen una serie de experiencias concretas en cinco países sobre las formas en que las personas, en su vida diaria, se aproximan y apropian de diversos asuntos “de interés general” de los que no sólo opinan e intercambian, sino de los que eventualmente participan de distintas formas en la vida pública. Esta...

Although many hopes and fears about children's experience of the Internet have been expressed in policy, academic research, and by parents and other stakeholders in children's futures, there is little research examining children's perspectives. This chapter reports on UK findings from the EU Kids Online qualitative study that give children a voice...

Diverse international perspectives show that children can benefit greatly from digital opportunities. Despite widespread optimism about the potential of digital technologies, especially for information and education, the research reveals an insufficient evidence base to guide policy and practice across all continents of the world, especially in mid...

Digital technologies have reshaped children’s lives, resulting in new opportunities for and risks to their well-being and rights. This chapter investigates the impact of digital technologies on children’s rights through the lens of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Up until now, not all rights have received the same level of...

This review focuses on addressing: trends, to understand recent developments and anticipate emerging issues; online risk of harm to children and implications for safety policy and practice; and key findings, linking to original reports, highlighting useful graphs and including verbatim quotes from children where available.

Rights-based approaches to children’s digital media practices are gaining attention as a framework for research, policy and initiatives that can balance children’s need for protection online with their capacity to maximize the opportunities and benefits of connectivity. But what does it mean to bring the concepts of the digital, rights and the chil...

The relatively recent rapid growth in the development, accessibility and use of mobile phones and the internet has transformed the lives of young people, especially in developed countries. There are many types of electronic or cyber-aggression, including flaming, online harassment, cyberstalking, denigration (put-downs), masquerade, outing, exclusi...

Audience measurement techniques currently fail to provide a clear picture of trends in children’s television viewing because of the diversification in devices on which television content can be viewed. It is argued that understanding how children engage with television content is undermined by commonplace but problematic comparisons of time spent o...

In this chapter Sonia Livingstone situates the Caring in Crisis project within scholarly traditions that focus on audience reception and interpretation of mediated texts. Drawing parallels with her research on the mediation of ‘public connection’, Livingstone stresses the significance of accounting for how people’s negotiation of meanings of texts...

As internet use becomes widespread at home, parents are trying to maximize their children’s online opportunities while also minimizing online risks. We surveyed parents of 6- to 14-year-olds in eight European countries (N=6,400). A factor analysis revealed two strategies. Enabling mediation is associated with increased online opportunities but also...

The entirely revised third edition of Research with Children forms a unique resource book on the methodology of childhood research with a core emphasis on theory driven practices. As in the previous two editions, this edition presents particular standpoints in the field, whilst also reflecting the latest developments in the now well-established int...

Drawing on an ongoing international research project, Global Kids Online, this article examines the theoretical and methodological challenges of conducting global research on children’s rights in the digital age at a time of intense socio-technological change and contested policy development. Arguing in favour of critically rethinking existing rese...

How does it feel to be a student at school? In chapter 5 we examine the texture of experience in the classroom, a place where children and young people spend many long hours. At Victoria Forest School, located in the cosmopolitan suburbs of London, a typical class encompassed wide variation in socioeconomic status and ethnicity and, therefore, in p...

Our final chapter develops normative concerns, to ask what can be said about the prospects for connected living and learning in the digital age. Our portrait of young people’s lives is in many senses a heartening one—they are generally sensible, thoughtful, and optimistic; doing reasonably well at school; largely happy at home; and having fun with...

What did we see when visiting students at home, with their families? Having formed our accounts of their learning and social identities in one setting, we had to revise our views of many of them when we saw them again at home—with their family, by themselves in their bedrooms, when they went online. As already foreshadowed by the network analysis,...

The chapter introduces readers to a class of 13 to 14-year-old in an average London school. Through our ethnographic case study, we present the rationale for the study and key theoretical frameworks. We explore the public’s concerns and anxieties around teaching, learning, family life, peer friendships, digital culture, social networks and social c...

In chapter 6, we take a close look at something that surprised us. The classroom in VFS in 2011–2012, as in many other UK schools, was heavily framed by the measurement system implemented in support of the government-mandated national curriculum. The result was a discursive and practical focus on “levels”—with learning managed through a rigorous re...

While young people’s experiences of life at home or school are greatly influenced by parents and teachers, they have rather more control over their friendships. Chapter 4 explores how the teenagers experiment with different aspects of their identity, trying out possible selves and finding ways to build relationships under the radar of the adult gaz...

This chapter shifts the frame from connections across the places of young people’s lives to connections or disconnections over time. We inquire into the pathways set out for the class by their school and homes, the trajectories they follow in practice, and the factors that facilitate or block them. While our observations permitted an analysis that...

How is social capital created and enacted? We answer this question by exploring six young people’s practices of music making out of school. Examining informal music making allowed us to see how ways of learning that are developed in school may or may not be carried outside school, demonstrating both connections and disconnections in discipline and...

Who do children know, spend time with, or turn to in times of trouble? Who helps with homework, and who do they hang out with online? Chapter 3 constructs a “whole-class network,” finding that through the young people’s own spontaneous practices of mutual connection or disconnection they have sorted themselves into some relatively stable groupings...

Concepts of connection and disconnection are often claimed but rarely challenged: why is it good to connect - people, places, or ideas? This chapter frames our inquiry in terms of theory. Our starting point is that meaning itself is generated through connection. Identities are relationally constituted. Learning extends across sites and experiences....

What opportunities for learning outside school were made available, pursued, and rejected by members of the class? Here we particularly focus on the ways that families from different kinds of social backgrounds—traditional middle-class, more bohemian, and highly educated families, along with desperately aspirational parents, especially those who ha...

How can one study children’s lives in the round? In our research process, we mapped the three domains of school, home, and peers onto the three terms of the school year, resulting in a research design that occupied us from the summer before the fieldwork year until the autumn term following. We began in the classroom, then followed the students hom...

Sonia Livingstone examines how policies and tools which evaluate digital rights and freedoms can be more inclusive of children.

As research on children and the internet grows, this article debates the intellectual and political choices researchers make when they frame their work in terms of effects (often risk-focused) or rights (drawing on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child). I contrast these frameworks in their guiding assumptions, methodology, conception of chi...

Do today’s youth have more opportunities than their parents? As they build their own social and digital networks, does that offer new routes to learning and friendship? How do they navigate the meaning of education in a digitally connected but fiercely competitive, highly individualized world? Based upon fieldwork at an ordinary London school, The...

"This book examines the presence and effects of new technologies in the lives of young people. The rapid pace of change in the development and use of digital technologies, and the likely impact this has on youth, means that the topic has wide implications for educational institutions, theory and practice. There is a demand for a concentration on th...

This article asks whether “sharenting” (sharing representations of one’s parenting or children online) is a form of digital self-representation. Drawing on interviews with 17 parent bloggers, we explore how parents define the borders of their digital selves and justify what is their “story to tell.” We find that bloggers grapple with profound ethic...

Bullying, including cyberbullying, affects a high percentage of children at different stages of their development, often severely undermining their health, emotional wellbeing and school performance. Victims may suffer sleep disorders, headaches, stomach pain, poor appetite and fatigue as well as feelings of low-self-esteem, anxiety, depression, sh...