In our house, we have battles with our kids about the amount of time they spend on their phones.
And yesterday I came across a very interesting tweet on the subject from Sonia Livingstone OBE, Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media and Communications at the LSE and a backer of this very campaign to help bring inted to the national curriculum:
They key thing here for me is the shift in focus pushed for by Professor Livingstone and Dr. Alicia Blum-Ross, a Research Officer in the LSE’s Department of Media and Communications on the Preparing for a Digital Future research project and also an inted backer.
We suggest that support for parents needs to focus on helping parents understand that the content of what their children watch and do on and with screens, the context of where they watch and do, and the connections they make (or do not make) while watching and doing.
These give more insights into the positive or negative ramifications of digital media use than a simple measure of time.
Rather than seeing themselves as policing children’s media use, parents need to be encouraged to think critically about how they can support positive uses and minimize negative consequences.
By the way, I had to look up what open access means and found this definition:
Open access is about making the products of research freely accessible to all. It allows research to be disseminated quickly and widely, the research process to operate more efficiently, and increased use and understanding of research by business, government, charities and the wider public.
