Tech Shock - from Parent Zone

Vicki and Geraldine talk to Emily Oster, the New York Times bestselling author of Cribsheet and, now, The Family Firm, about how data can help us make better parenting decisions. Talking points: Is it possible to take some of the emotions out of parenting choices? What does data tell us about screen time? Why, when thinking about your child’s day, you should start with sleep. Tech Shock is a Paren...

As Voice Box publishes its report, Digital wellbeing, Vicki and Geraldine talk to Jonathan Baggaley, Chief Executive of the PSHE Association, and Natalie Foos and Lottie Gimlette of Voice Box about the highs and lows for young people online. Talking points Given the data on young people and pornography, why isn’t more being done? What's causing the epidemic of anxiety in young people? What ki...

Vicki and Geraldine talk to the author of Privacy is Power about toxic data. Talking points: Are you not getting jobs because of your secret data file? What’s wrong with the argument that data collection doesn’t matter if you’ve got nothing to hide? What links online data brokers with the creators of the subprime mortgage market who were behind the 2008 financial crash? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone...

Vicki and Geraldine ask Dr John Coleman, author of The Teacher And The Teenage Brain, whether recent advances in neuroscience can help parents understand and manage their teenagers’ online lives Talking points: Why carrot may be better than stick The teenage brain - a perfect storm for online addiction? OK, so we know a bit more about the teenage brain - can that be turned into strategies for maki...

As the Wall St Journal reports that Facebook knew Instagram was making girls unhappy but did nothing, Vicki and Geraldine talk to Charles Arthur, tech journalist and author of Social Warming, a comprehensive history and analysis of why our relationship with social media is so often dysfunctional. Talking points: Is social media making most young people feel like losers? ’Trans women are women’, ‘a...

What is AI exactly? How is it different from the algorithms we know and live with? In the first episode of the new series, Vicki and Geraldine ask Carly Kind, director of the Ada Lovelace Institute, whether we should be panicked? Talking points: Are we guinea pigs for a great AI experiment? Is AI affecting children’s lives? How can we work out what AI is doing to us? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone pr...

Vicki and Geraldine discuss the recent Ofsted report into sexual harassment of girls and ask how much is down to what happens online? Talking points: - How significant is it that young children are being exposed to hardcore porn? - Why - apparently - can nothing be done to stop this? - What can parents do? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the lates...

Vicki and Geraldine talk to Professor Victoria Nash, new director of the Oxford Internet Institute. Is tech undermining parental instinct? What could the government be doing better when it comes to regulating tech companies? The new Online Safety Bill relies on technical solutions - will they actually work? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the late...

Amanda Third of Western Sydney University’s Young and Resilient Research Centre tells Vicki and Geraldine how online safety worries can lead to adults controlling children and young people against their interests. Talking points Is online resilience simply a personal quality? Is it more than ‘bouncing back’? Technology is often implicated in young people’s declining mental health. But can it actua...

Vicki and Geraldine talk to Lauren Klein, co-author of Data Feminism, about what’s wrong with data collection, its presentation and ethics. Talking points: What doesn’t get counted? Nobody can fit their whole self into a form: can datasets ever reflect the way things really are? Are emotion and data, far from being opposites, actually inextricably linked? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Fo...

Vicki and Geraldine talk to Leah Jewett of Outspoken Sex Ed. Talking points: How to have the ‘porn talk' What difference has pornography made to the way young people think about sex? How can parents talk to boys about consent? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the latest on our work on helping families to thrive in the digital age. Presented by...

Vicki and Geraldine talk to Julia Davidson, Professor of Criminology and an expert in cybercrime and online harms, about how easy it is for young people to get drawn into breaking the law online. Talking points: Are all young people vulnerable to being drawn into cybercrime? What kinds of young people are attracted? Not all cybercrime is hacking: what should we do about young people illegally acce...

Vicki and Geraldine talk to Lottie Gimlette of Voice Box about their report on Only Fans. Talking points: What’s the appeal of Only Fans? Is this kind of sex work sex positive or peak patriarchy? How secure is the platform’s age-gating? Is it as straightforward as it seems - or is there  grooming, and pimps? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the lat...

In the wake of reports of sexual harassment in schools, Vicki and Geraldine talk to Jonathan Baggaley of the PSHE Association about what’s gone wrong. Talking points: - Are parents withdrawing children from RSE? - What do we know about sexual harassment in schools? - Pornography: an extreme form of surveillance capitalism? - As young people face an epidemic of poor mental health, why are some chil...

Vicki and Geraldine talk to Robert Wigley, author of Born Digital, The Story of a Distracted Generation, about what he sees as the damaging effects of tech on young people. Talking points: - Is tech really eroding empathy among the young? - If young people are so damaged by tech, how come most of them demand their work has purpose? - How big a problem is it that online harms legislation doesn’t in...

Vicki and Geraldine talk to Ellen Helsper, Professor of Digital Inequalities at LSE, about why giving children laptops isn’t enough. Talking points: - Why does social disadvantage so often turn into into digital disadvantage? - Will the gap between the digital haves and have-nots widen, stay the same, or get smaller as more people are exposed to tech? - Why have we been so bad at teaching children...

Vicki and Geraldine talk to Sarah Drummond of design agency Snook about baking safety into the design of tech products and services. Talking points: How far can designers affect our online experiences? The internet - as designed so far - doesn’t always seem to be in our best interests so why should we trust designers? 'Safety tech’ implies bolting tools onto existing services - is there a bet...

Vicki and Geraldine talk to Sam Gilbert, fintech entrepreneur, Cambridge researcher, and author of the radical new book, Good Data, about why he takes issue with the fashionable idea of surveillance capitalism. Talking points: How much does it matter that ‘our data’ is being collected? Is data actually ’the new oil’? How bad is online advertising really? Is the focus on privacy actually harming ou...

Vicki and Geraldine talk to Nicola Aitken of Full Fact about misinformation - and how we can possibly tell what’s true online. Talking points: Who is attracted to misinformation? What psychological needs do conspiracy theories meet? Can small fact-checking organisations such as Full Fact push back against the sheer volume of untruths online? Has disinformation become war by other means? What do we...

Can machines make the online world a better place? Vicki and Geraldine talk to Ian Stevenson, CEO of OSTIA (the Online Safety Tech Industry Association) about whether a British innovation success can solve the problems of the internet. Talking points: - Will online safety tech inevitably compromise privacy? - Do we apply higher standards of privacy and free speech online to offline? - How big a th...

Why are we facing a gambling - and now gaming - addiction crisis? Vicki and Geraldine talk to Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones, founder of the first NHS gambling disorders clinic and also the first NHS gaming disorders clinic. Talking points: Are there links between gambling and gaming? How come we don’t know how big a problem we’ve got? Gaming: a gateway to problem gambling? What does gaming diso...

The UK is trying to regulate the internet - but much will depend on what happens globally. Vicki and Geraldine talk to Max Beverton-Palmer of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change about how much we can seriously do by ourselves. Talking points: Why is 2021 the year of rethinking the internet? Will a plethora of national initiatives lead to the so-called splinternet? To what extent can nationa...

Lockdown learning has deepened and sharpened inequality. Vicki and Geraldine talk to Rebecca Montacute of the Sutton Trust about whether we can fix that. Talking points: Why do so many children still not have devices? Why are they still not connected? Will there be more blended learning in future? Can the National Tutoring programme help students catch up? What can we do about 16-19-year-olds, who...

As the UNHCR announces that children’s rights apply online, Vicki and Geraldine talk to Tony Stower of 5Rights about what that means for for tech companies, policymakers and parents. Talking points: - How is it helpful to view online harms through the lens of children’s rights? - How do you manage competing rights using the blunt instruments of legislation? - Why has children’s data been overlooke...

Vicki and Geraldine talk to Andy Robertson, author of Taming Gaming. Talking points: - Should parents stop worrying about the time children spend gaming? - Can parents learn to love video games? - Should games provide endless opportunities for spending? - Does publishing the odds of loot boxes in video games make them any less like gambling? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zo...