Families may want to relax some of their usual rules for digital media use due to social distancing. But keeping bedtime screen-free still makes sense.
Children see adults on smartphones, looking up information they need to know, and being continuously connected. They want to copy this behaviour in their play and practise being an adult.
We need to shift the focus away from parenting that relies on threats and rewards, to one that nurtures meaningful parent-child and child-technology relationships.
Teaching fear and avoidance of technology may protect people from negative consequences. But it also prevents them from finding, and benefiting from, productive uses of new innovations.
Footage of children throwing tantrums when their tablet is taken away can be unsettling. But the fact is technology can be good for their development, if they engage with it positively.
Many people are shocked by what children are willing to share about themselves online. Is it that they don’t understand privacy, or just have a different conception of it compared to adults?
Taiwan recently made the unprecedented move of banning children two years and younger from using any form of digital technology. Older children and teenagers will also be severely restricted, with new…
You might have seen reports that Google could offer children under the age of 13 years a simple and safe way to access their internet services, including Gmail and YouTube. But will this new strategy really…
Leslie Haddon, London School of Economics and Political Science
The bond between a child and their smartphone is like an umbilical cord. Now, a new survey has uncovered just how dependent the “smartphone generation” of British children are on the devices compared to…