🛣More Than Robots #39 / March 2021

Hello,

'White in the moon the long road lies,' AE Housman

So a road has been mapped out that will lead us toward a post-pandemic utopia - how we travel that road will vary greatly - some may glide there but for the majority, it will be a long march on the margins. Whichever way you travel and whatever you have to carry, here are some helpful signs and stopping places along the way...

🗳 Take Part

Survey - Safety by design guidelines / DCMS
DCMS are currently gathering insight from organisations about new guidelines for safer design of online service. If your organisation has less than 250 employees and you provide a website or app that enables:

  • users to interact with one another in any way AND/OR
  • users to access content of any kind that was created and uploaded by another user. E.g. image, text, video including livestream

They would be interested in capturing your thoughts. It should take no longer than 5-10 minutes to complete.

📖 Research

Back in lockdown: Girls’ and young women’s hopes and fears for the future / Girl Guiding
53% of girls and young women say the latest lockdown has negatively affected their mental health. 70% said missing friends was the toughest element of lockdown

Pathways from offline to online risk: new findings / UNICEF Innocenti
Parents tend to use restrictive mediation when they or their child have a lower level of digital skills. Restrictive mediation reduces online risks mostly at the expense of digital skills and online opportunities

Changes in children mental health symptoms from March 2020 to Jan 2021 / CoSPACE
Children with SEN/ND and those from low-income or single adult households have continued to show elevated mental health symptoms throughout the pandemic, with higher levels of behavioural, emotional, and restless/attentional difficulties

The youth Digital Skills Indicator / ySkills
A review of the literature led to a framework identifying four dimensions that constitute digital skills: (1) technical and operational skills; (2) information navigation and processing skills; (3) communication and interaction skills; and (4) content creation and production skills


📎 Resources

Supervised experiences on YouTube / YouTube
New tools to enable younger children to access appropriate content from across the whole of YouTube

What is your world view? / Jason Ramasmi
Addressing the polarised online debate through a series of podcasts that 'encourage you to get exploring and thinking about views that might be different to your own'

My time in care / Action for Children
An Instagram series about life in foster care told by care leavers / Further info and resources

Digital Lifeline funding / Good Things Foundation
Open funding call to provide devices and data for people with learning disabilities. Deadline March 15

Guidance: Harmful online challenges and online hoaxes / DfE
What you can do to prepare for the next harmful online challenge and online hoax

How to get out of Zoom lessons
An 8 year old's UX/media literacy/parenting adventure


💬 Inspiration and opinion

Pros and cons of child rights impact assessment for digital decision makers
'What’s the best way to anticipate the impacts of digital decision-making on children and young people?'

Can anyone moderate podcasts?
'A disparate network of companies makes up the podcasting world, including apps, hosting services, sales teams, and networks. Moderation will need to happen across these companies to be effective'

How the far right uses video games and tech to lure and radicalise teenage recruits
'Every day we are seeing far-right violent extremist and terrorist groups exploit youth culture, not only to evade content moderation but also to radicalise young people themselves'

The enduring allure of conspiracies
'People are pretty good at spotting fake news, including bogus conspiracy theories — but that doesn’t mean they don’t share fake stuff on social media'



...and finally
If the road to post-pandemiopia seems a little bumpy right now try these road trips instead

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Jamie Larson
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