Search

In the EU Kids Online II project, data were collected from children and parents via in-home face-to-face interviews in 25 European countries to examine children's Internet use, activities and skills, the risk of harm they encountered, parental awareness, and safety strategies regarding children's Internet use and risks. The project provides comparable cross-national survey data to inform social policies for children's Internet use and protection. Nationally representative survey samples were drawn in each country, with data obtained in a face-to-face interview with 25?142 Internet-using children aged 9-16 years together with one of their parents (c. 1000 child/parent pairs per country). Questions were primarily closed-ended, with an open-ended (qualitative) element and with sensitive questions asked of the child in private.

Background: This article summarizes the approach taken to develop UK Chief Medical Officers' physical activity guidelines for the Under 5s, 2019. Methods: The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE)-Adaptation, Adoption, De Novo Development (ADOLOPMENT) approach was used, based on the guidelines from Canada and Australia, with evidence updated to February 2018. Recommendations were based on the associations between (1) time spent in sleep, sedentary time, physical activity, and 10 health outcomes and (2) time spent in physical activity and sedentary behavior on sleep outcomes (duration and latency). Results: For many outcomes, more time spent in physical activity and sleep (up to a point) was beneficial, as was less time spent in sedentary behavior. The authors present, for the first time, evidence in GRADE format on behavior type–outcome associations for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Stakeholders supported all recommendations, but recommendations on sleep and screen time were not accepted by the Chief Medical Officers; UK guidelines will refer only to physical activity. Conclusions: This is the first European use of GRADE-ADOLOPMENT to develop physical activity guidelines. The process is robust, rapid, and inexpensive, but the UK experience illustrates a number of challenges that should help development of physical activity guidelines in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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-thirds concerned the association with online opportunities or other benefits. Another third examined online risks of harm. Findings showed a positive association between digital skills and online opportunities, information benefits, and orientation to technology. Greater digital skills were indirectly linked to greater exposure to online risks, although any link to harm was unclear. While technical skills were linked with mixed or even negative outcomes, information skills were linked with positive outcomes. There was little research on the outcomes of communication or creative digital skills. Future research should examine the dimensions of digital skills separately and encompass a wider range of outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In both schools and homes, information and communication technologies (ICT) are widely seen as enhancing learning, this hope fuelling their rapid diffusion and adoption throughout developed societies. But they are not yet so embedded in the social practices of everyday life as to be taken for granted, with schools proving slower to change their lesson plans than they were to fit computers in the classroom. This article examines two possible explanations--first, that convincing evidence of improved learning outcomes remains surprisingly elusive, and second, the unresolved debate over whether ICT should be conceived of as supporting delivery of a traditional or a radically different vision of pedagogy based on soft skills and new digital literacies. The difficulty in establishing traditional benefits, and the uncertainty over pursuing alternative benefits, raises fundamental questions over whether society really desires a transformed, technologically-mediated relation between teacher and learner. (Contains 3 notes.)

Social networking sites have been rapidly adopted by children and, especially, teenagers and young people worldwide, enabling new opportunities for the presentation of the self, learning, construction of a wide circle of relationships, and the management of privacy and intimacy. On the other hand, there are also concerns that social networking increases the likelihood of new risks to the self, these centring on loss of privacy, bullying, harmful contacts and more. This article reviews recent findings regarding children and teenagers' social networking practices in order to identify implications for future research and public policy. These focus on the interdependencies between opportunities and risks, the need for digital or media literacy education, the importance of building safety considerations into the design and management of social networking sites, the imperative for greater attention to "at risk" children in particular, and the importance of a children's rights framework in developing evidence-based policy in this area.

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 review publications relating to anxiety, depression, eating disorders and nonsuicidal self‐injury to identify common and condition‐specific digital experiences and how these may be implicated in the origins and maintenance of these mental health conditions. Methods: A systematic literature search using a combination of mental health, digital experience (including social media use), and age of the target population terms was conducted on four databases. Detailed findings from the included studies were summarised using a combination of thematic and narrative methods. Results: Five qualitative and 21 quantitative studies met the eligibility criteria for inclusion (n = 5021). Nine studies included adolescents with depression, one with eating problems, two with nonsuicidal self‐injury and 14 with multiple emotional health conditions. The review identified six themes related to the target populations' digital experiences: (a) social connectivity and peer support; (b) escape and/or distraction; (c) social validation and social comparison; (d) accessing/creation of potentially harmful content; (e) cyberbullying; and (f) difficulties with self‐regulation during engagement with digital media. Conclusions: Digital practices of adolescents with pre‐existing clinical vulnerabilities are complex and encompass a range of positive and negative experiences, which appear to have common elements across different clinical populations. The literature is currently too limited to identify disorder‐specific practices, with too few direct or indirect comparisons between conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research project, UK Children Go Online (UKCGO), is conducting a rigorous investigation of 9-19 year-olds' use of the Internet, comparing girls and boys of different ages, backgrounds, etc., in order to ask how the Internet may be transforming, or may itself be shaped by, family life, peer networks and school. It combines qualitative interviews and observations with a major national survey of 9-19 year-olds (n = 1511) and their parents (n = 906). This article focuses on two of the key opportunities the Internet affords to children and young people: first, education, informal learning and literacy and, second, communication and participation. While education and learning represent the "approved" uses of the Internet, which is often the reason for which parents and governments invest in domestic Internet access, children and young people themselves are far more excited by the Internet as a communication medium. However, not all the opportunities available to children and young people are being taken up equally. Hence the article concludes by charting the emergence of a new divide, signaling emerging inequalities in the quality of Internet use, with children and young people being divided into those for whom the Internet is an increasingly rich, diverse, engaging and stimulating resource of growing importance in their lives, and those for whom it remains a narrow, unengaging if occasionally useful resource of rather less significance. (Contains 1 table, 10 figures and 1 note.)