Lydia Plowman’s research while affiliated with University of Edinburgh and other places

We report on influences on Azerbaijani families' parental mediation strategies for managing young children's digital practices at home. Data were gathered with five families in 2019 and 2023 using the Living Journals approach. Both fathers and mothers revealed the influences of gender and cultural norms on parental mediation. Fathers held legislative power by making decisions about rules; mothers exercised executive power by implementing those rules but found the process of mediation to be in tension with their desire to be accepted as a ‘good mother’. The study revealed social and cultural influences on parents' mediation strategies that differ from those identified in countries in the Global North.

The proliferation of smart toys has led to an increase in young children’s exposure to technologies that ask for their personal data, thus creating privacy concerns and efforts to minimise the exploitation of children’s data. Research that addresses the ways in which young children (below the age of five or six) could come to understand a concept as abstract as ‘personal data’ is scarce but this is fundamental to the approach presented here. The paper makes three main contributions: (i) a discussion of what we mean by children’s understanding of personal data from smart toys, (ii) a theoretical account of approaches for supporting children’s understanding of data based on developmental and child interaction design literature and, building on this foundation, (iii) a description of a previously unreported prototype smart toy – Edi the Bear – along with a small-scale pilot study to explore the extent to which the toy can support children’s understanding of personal data. Preliminary findings suggest that revealing the mechanisms by which personal data is collected can help children to develop their capacity to understand that their data has value as it can be used by unknown others to learn about who they are. We describe the main functionality of the prototype and consider the ways in which it could be used by educators to communicate concepts of personal data in a way that is meaningful to young children.

This paper outlines the key findings of a study developed in collaboration between academics, teachers and children’s media companies. The project was co-produced in that all project partners contributed to the development of the project aims and objectives and were involved in data collection, analysis and dissemination. The aim of the study was to identify children's uses of and responses to apps in terms of their play and creativity. This paper focuses on the digital play with tablets of children aged from birth to three. Ofcom (2019:4) has reported that six in ten of three- and four-year-olds in the UK use any device to go online, with 49% using a tablet for this purpose. This is a large, and growing, market that deserves the attention of researchers (Kucirkova and Radesky, 2017). Given that technology is embedded in children’s lives, playing an important part in their ‘multimodal lifeworlds’ (Arnott and Yelland, 2020), it is timely to consider what value this use has in relation to play and creativity, as both are highly significant to children’s development (Broadhead, Howard and Wood, 2010).

The overall aim of the study reported here was to explore young children’s everyday experiences with digital technologies at home. We focus on the part of the study in which we adapted an experience sampling technique (Hektner et al., 2007) to learn how the day-to-day lives of children aged five were experienced and interpreted. Over a period of two weeks, Savadova prompted five mothers three times a day to send her pictures or 30-second videos of their five-year-old participant child. The parents were also invited to send answers to five brief questions asking where the child was, who they were with, what they were doing, why they were doing it and how they were feeling, along the lines of the study described by Plowman and Stevenson (2012).

This study is the first to systematically investigate the extent to which apps for children aged 0–5 foster play and creativity. There is growing evidence of children's use of tablets, but limited knowledge of the use of apps by children of children of this age. This ESRC‐funded study undertook research that identified how UK children aged from 0 to 5 use apps, and how far the use of apps promotes play and creativity, given the importance of these for learning and development. A survey was conducted with 2000 parents of under 5s in the UK, using a random, stratified sample, and ethnographic case studies of children in six families were undertaken. Over 17 hours of video films of children using apps were analysed. Findings indicate that children of this age are using a variety of apps, some of which are not aimed at their age range. The design features of such apps can lead to the support or inhibition of play and creativity. The study makes an original contribution to the field in that it offers an account of how apps contribute to the play and creativity of children aged five and under.

Young children aged 4-5 years are online in rapidly increasing numbers. This is due to the accessibility of the internet afforded young children via touchscreen technologies. In Australian, the United Kingdom and United States of America, calls have been made for cyber-safety education to be provided for young children in their early childhood settings. However, little knowledge exists regarding the pedagogical provision of this education. This paper reports on study conducted with three Australian early childhood teachers focussed on the development of cyber-safety education for young children.

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 interviews were undertaken with both parents and children, separately and together, in order to address the research aims. This chapter focuses on the data relating to parental mediation of young children’s digital practices. Findings indicate that parents used a narrow range of strategies in comparison to parents of older children, primarily because they considered their children too young to be at risk when using technologies. However, children’s own reports suggested that some were able to access online sites independently from a young age and would have benefitted from more support and intervention. The implications of the study for future research and practice are considered.