📖 Research

The Nominet Digital Youth Index is a free-to-use national, annual benchmarking and barometer research identifying and monitoring the key drivers, issues and opportunities in young people’s relationship with digital technology across the UK.

See also: Lloyds Consumer Digital Index 2022

Conflicts involving digital technologies have serious implications for children’s rights and security. Behavioural surveillance through algorithmic and cyber techniques is already a pervasive reality of contemporary conflicts.

England has 404,310 children in need - up 4.1% from 2021 and up 3.9% from 2020. The highest number since 2018.

Disabled girls and young women were more likely to see or experience sexism online (89% compared to 79% who aren’t disabled). It’s also a problem for 9 in 10 (90%) LGBTQ+ girls and young women (compared to 76% of those who aren’t).

64% of identified Safety Tech providers are headquartered in the UK or US, with smaller, emerging pockets of Safety Tech talent in Canada, Germany, France, Israel, and Ireland.

Gamifying information leads to increased knowledge acquisition and could lead to a greater positive influence on behaviour. This pilot suggests that serious games could be a promising online safety measure.

📎 Resources

A practical tool for Carers, Practitioners and Young People that tells the story of 3 households all of whom have different experiences of how mobile devices and the Internet are used in the fostering home.

Catch up on presentations on media literacy from Faith Rogow, PhD; Prof. Julian McDougall, Almudena Lara and many more.

How should professionals refer to the various ways children share or are exposed to personal and abusive images, text and other content?

A free resource to show how internet access is elemental to daily living in the UK

💬 Inspiration and opinion

It seems urgent that we find ways to recognise vulnerability, even as we fully acknowledge that children are agents, actors, citizens, not just victims in need of protection

We were told that the Internet would “dematerialize” society and decrease energy use. Instead, the opposite is true: the internet has quickly become one of the most carbon-intensive information processing systems.

A new world of contextual advertising has opened up thanks to AI, which relies more on what’s being viewed than the person viewing it. For example, text generators can be used to customize ad copy to match the sentiment and phrasing of the text surrounding it, while image generators can be used to customize the color tone or background imagery to be more subtly reflective of what’s being viewed.

...and finally

If your child has a fear of dentists but loves gaming then this may be the gadget for your Christmas list - or not