Parenting in the Digital Age

I'm going to put my cards on the table and say that I'm definitely not a 'curling parent'. And if ever I was, I'm definitely not anymore...



I have three boys – 8, 5 and 3 – all very independent in their own right with one perhaps being a bit more ‘demanding’ than the others. We don’t and never have ‘child-proofed’ our home. OK, we don’t leave knives lying around the place or the fireguard off the fireplace, but we’ve never used a stair gate, we’ve never put covers on plug sockets and we’ve never bubble wrapped a coffee table.

I say this in jest of course and as a parent, I protect my kids as best I can but there are always going to be times and situations when I can’t protect them and I accept that. All I can do is equip them the best I can, so that they can protect themselves the best they can.

So what, you might ask, is a ‘curling parent’? Danish psychologist Bent Hougaard coined the term "Curling Parents" to refer to those parents who try to sweep away all obstacles in their offspring's path so that their child can go through life without the slightest bump. They continually make sure that nothing is interfering with or negatively affecting their child.

It’s a somewhat regimented and directed parenting style with the goal of protecting the physical and mental well-being of the child. But what’s wrong with that? Well, the downside is that parents are unconsciously at risk of stifling the child. What they are doing is potentially curtailing their children’s chance of developing essential life skills and feelings of personal responsibility and achievement.

Source rte.ie

The Sydney eSafety 2019 conference saw policy makers, researchers and practitioners from different fields and countries come together to discuss how to improve children’s digital lives. Our presentation on Global Kids Online (GKO) provided a foretaste of our 11 country comparative findings report, and the insights gleaned from an independent evaluation report of GKO impact in our partner countries. Both reports will be published in the coming few months – watch this space.



GKO, an international research effort bringing together LSE, UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti, EU Kids Online, and multiple partners around the world, aims to:
- Create a global network of researchers/ experts and build national capacity;
- Understand children’s digital experiences and outcomes in all their individual and contextual diversity;
- Contribute to the evidence base for policy makers and practitioners to strengthen children’s rights in the digital age, maximizing their opportunities to benefit while minimizing risk of harm.

Working across multiple countries is challenging, especially as culturally-diverse conditions in the global South shape the experiences of the majority of children now online. For instance, while in the global North we make a series of assumptions about the context in which children go online, these may be invalid in the global South, where community values and parenting practices are important in distinctive ways, where digital devices are often shared in highly unequal ways, and where children’s online lives are “mobile first” or “mobile only.”

Our research toolkit (see video) seeks to balance cross-national comparability with contextual adaptation. And our impact toolkit seeks to ensure that the resulting findings reach policy makers effectively. We have just finished analysing the data from 14,733 children aged 9-17 who use the internet were surveyed using the Global Kids Online methodology, together with one of their parents, between 2016-2018, in 11 countries across four different regions.

Source: globalkidsonline.net

In an era where data privacy is getting further and further out of reach for adults, the digital native generation has convinced parents of the right to privacy on their social media, text, and phone communications. Gone are the days of the carpool drop offs where teens talked freely in the backseat while a parent casually looked for clues or make sure things were socially on track for their children.



The days of the family LAN line where you had an idea of who was calling the house are a forgotten memory. This generation feels a sense of entitlement to privacy online from parents, but is freely giving away their digital footprint to companies and peers which the in turn use to manipulate them. Targeted advertising, engaging videos tailored to their specific fears, and the distribution of naked photos of each other are common place and happening right under the noses of parents who don’t know how or where to look.

Xennials are the generation of digital immigrants, writing the rule book for parenting in the digital age. They got this tech when we were young enough to adopt it, but old enough to have some judgement about what information is private. The current generation is being raised on free porn with no age gates, pressure to create their online brand in elementary school, and parents who are addicted to their own phones.

The digital immigrant generation is still reeling from identity theft, credit agencies being hacked, and a loss of control. The newest generations of tech users think live streaming naked with random strangers is a fun dare for a middle school slumber party. We have never had more distance between two generations on the value of privacy.

Source pedimom.com