More Than Robots #95 November 2025

For gold in phisike is a cordial; Therefore he loved gold in special.

For gold in phisike is a cordial; Therefore he loved gold in special.

📖 Research

Growing up online

Reflections from young people highlight inequities in power between individuals and private companies...Further research and policy developments could benefit from addressing these inequities and embedding their voices into decision-making. Also: Born connected: How Gen Z navigate their digital lives and Smartphone use in a large US adult population: Temporal associations between objective measures of usage and mental well-being

How Parents Manage Screen Time for Kids

About four-in-ten (42%) say they could be doing better at managing their kid’s screen time. A larger share – 58% – say they’re doing the best they can.

LLMs Can Get "Brain Rot"!

Continual exposure to junk data—defined as engaging (fragmentary and popular) or semantically low-quality (sensationalist) content—induces systematic cognitive decline in large language models. Also: Why teenagers are deliberately seeking brain rot on TikTok and AI Britain versus Reality

Boys in the Digital Wild: Online Culture, Identity, and Well-Being

Three in four boys age 11 to 17 regularly encounter masculinity-related posts about building muscle, making money, fighting, dating and relationships, or weapons. Also: What do boys think? and Men and Boys: Research Snapshots

The Future Report

Parents/guardians and family members are the most trusted source of advice about healthy online habits, for over a third of teens (32%), followed by friends (12%) and teachers/school (9%). Meanwhile almost a fifth (19%) of researc participants have most trust in themselves.

Opportunities And Risks In The Digital Gaming Ecosystem

Professionals recognise the potential of gaming to promote learning, creativity, socialisation and inclusion, as well as the need to address risks such as toxic behaviour, grooming and predatory monetisation. Also: Online gaming statistics 2025

Parents Talk Online Safety

Concern about online safety spans the political spectrum. Across countries, voters who vote for or identify with different political parties are united in their concern about online safety.

Generally, participants lacked awareness of safety mechanisms during GenAI search experiences, but said they would expect these to be in place, especially to protect users who are children or who have mental health conditions.

Protecting Children in Online Gaming

Gaming companies are responsible for creating safe products for children from the ground up. Governments should also invest in prevention and intervention programs to develop protective online factors, including gaming and digital media literacy in schools and among educators, parents, and communities.

🧰 Resources

The Theory and Techniques Tool

An interactive resource providing information about links between behaviour change techniques and their mechanisms of action

Online Blackmail

A CEOP Education resource for children and young people aged 12 to 14 to help develop their understanding of two types of online blackmail: Financially Motivated Sexual Extortion (FMSE) and Blackmail for further images (BFFI)

Early Childhood Development and Screen Time Toolkit

Intended to help early childhood professionals support healthy media habits for young children Also: The Children and Screens Guide for Early Child Development and Media Use: Infants and Children Ages 0-5 and Sesame Workshop Digital wellbeing

💡Inspiration and opinion

The Online Safety Act at Two

Representations from civil society on numerous issues - on significant risks and harms from AI , on a more sophisticated, age-differentiated approach to safety by design, and on some of the major gaps in the Act - have largely fallen on deaf ears.

The value of childhood

If childhood is increasingly mediated through commercial platforms, the issues at stake go beyond how children are spending their time. We should ask who benefits from this, what values are being prioritised, and what kind of adulthood comes after a commercialised childhood.

Technology Has Broken Authoritative Parenting. Here's How We Fix It.

Before tools, before training, we need a fundamental change in our vocal and actual support for parents, both online and offline. Authoritative parenting matters more than technical knowledge. We don't need to make parents tech experts, we need to support them to be parents.

…and finally

I’m sorry, but you do not have enough coins for democracy

Subscribe to More Than Robots

Sign up now to get access to the library of members-only issues.
Jamie Larson
Subscribe