Tech Shock - from Parent Zone
107 episodes - English - Latest episode: 27 days ago -Tech Shock: Everything you always wanted to know about tech and family life.Podcasting from Parent Zone,the media literacy experts, host Vicki Shotbolt explores the upsides and downsides of family life in the digital age. With a range of expert guests she looks at online harms to children ranging from pornography to gambling and at what should be done about them. Incurably optimistic, Vicki also celebrate the many benefits of tech for children and young people, as she considers how best to live in a world in which family life is now inescapably digital.Listen every Monday, subscribe, and give us a five star review.
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Episodes
7. Season roundup, with VoiceBox
March 31, 2024 23:00 - 33 minutes - 23.5 MBNatalie Foos, director of the youth content platform VoiceBox joins Vicki to provide some young people’s perspectives on the hot (or tricky) topics from Tech Shock's season 8. Talking points: In a year where half the world could be at the polls, how equipped are young people to avoid disinformation? As social platforms and online games are increasingly built to engage and retain, how autonomous can young users feel online? With tech developments moving so fast, do young people feel li...
6. The secrets of search
March 18, 2024 18:00 - 34 minutes - 23.9 MBThis week Vicki talks to Emma Higham, product management lead on Google's Search Child's Safety Portfolio about some of the exciting new tools they've been working on. Talking points Every family is different so how do tech companies create safety tools that work for everyone? What is LEO and why is it important? How does search think about people looking for information at vulnerable moments? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the latest ...
5. Young people and the emerging gender divide
March 04, 2024 00:00 - 31 minutes - 22 MBFrom incels to Andrew Tate, young people are increasingly exposed to debates around gender when online. This week, Vicki is joined by Rosie Campbell, professor of politics and director of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London to discuss the topic of gender in the digital age. Talking points: What do we really mean when we talk of the ‘gender divide’? How is social media making the topic of gender more polarised, and more profitable (for some)? What’s th...
4. The debate surrounding screen time, with Pete Etchells
February 26, 2024 00:00 - 50 minutes - 34.9 MBThis week Vicki is joined by Pete Etchells, professor of Psychology and Science Communication at Bath Spa University to discuss the topic of screen time and some of the debate that surrounds it. Talking points: What is ‘screen time’, and how hard is it to accurately measure? Why do we tend to look at tech through a harmful lens, and does this stand in the way of digitally flourishing? Do some policies just help us avoid thinking about children’s tech use? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone pr...
3. The ‘wicked problem’ of child financial harms
February 19, 2024 00:00 - 36 minutes - 25.6 MBOur 2023 research found that young people aged 13-18 spend over £50m online each week. But this financial autonomy could mean increased exposure to harms like scams, gambling, influencer marketing, and criminal exploitation. This week Vicki is joined by Maya Daver-Massion and Zixuan Fu, part of the security and online safety team at PUBLIC to shed more light on ‘child financial harms’. Talking points: What exactly makes child financial harms such a ‘wicked problem’ to solve? Other so...
2. Katie Davis
February 12, 2024 00:00 - 40 minutes - 27.8 MBVicki talks to Dr. Katie Davis , Associate Professor at the University of Washington about what happens when technology intersects with child development and why good enough parenting really is good enough. How are online platforms designed and what sort of design leads to certain behaviours? When does technology support child development and when does it get in the way? What does AI mean for human agency? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for al...
1. Has media literacy’s time finally come?
February 05, 2024 00:00 - 46 minutes - 32.2 MBIn 2024, the year of many elections, governments across the world are bracing themselves for an onslaught of disinformation. Vicki and Geraldine talk to Professor Julian McDougall of Bournemouth University about whether media literacy is finally poised to break free of its Cinderella status. Talking points: Why do politicians both sneer at media literacy and grab onto it as the answer to online harms? How do you measure the impact of media literacy when success is so often about what does...
7. Sharenting
November 27, 2023 00:00 - 48 minutes - 33.4 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to sharenting expert Claire Bessant about the pros and cons of posting about your children online. Talking points: Are parental influencers who post about their children doing anything different from families down the centuries whose children have worked on the family farm? Is there any point in talking about consent when children are being required to consent to their parents? Even if you’re careful not to post anything about your children in public spaces onlin...
6. A problem hiding in plain sight?
November 20, 2023 00:00 - 39 minutes - 27.4 MBVicki and Geraldine discuss Parent Zone’s latest research into financial harms to children online. Is this a category of harms that we’ve simply overlooked? And if so, why? We tend to think children aren’t doing much financially online, but how true is this When children get scammed online, why are they often reluctant to tell anyone? Young people told us that many of them were acting illegally online. Is the internet normalising lawlessness? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follo...
5. The respectable face of the porn industry?
November 13, 2023 00:00 - 41 minutes - 28.7 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to clinical psychologist Elly Hanson about OnlyFans, which has done such a good marketing job that it's been popping up at child protection conferences. But should it be there? What do we really know about the streaming site that combines porn and prostitution? Talking points: Is OnlyFans changing young people’s sexual scripts? What does the psychological research tell us about the impact of the objectification that’s central to OnlyFans? Young women advertising ...
4. Money muling
November 06, 2023 00:00 - 41 minutes - 28.7 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to Tracey Carpenter of Cifas, the organisation that runs the UK fraud database, about the alarming rise in the numbers of children involved in fraud. Talking points: Why are children susceptible to being recruited as money mules? How does money muling work when children are involved? How should we respond when children are being exploited and at the same time are committing crimes? What are the consequences if a young person is put on the fraud database? Tech S...
3. Romancing the bot
October 30, 2023 00:00 - 48 minutes - 33.2 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to Natalie Foos, director of Voicebox, about the site’s new report on young people forming relationships with AI chatbots. Talking points: Should you feel jealous if your partner falls in love with an AI? Why were the chatbots Voicebox investigated sending unprompted sexually explicit messages? Can AI bots help with loneliness? Or are they commodifying our most personal and human feelings? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social medi...
2. The woman behind the Online Safety Act
October 22, 2023 23:00 - 47 minutes - 32.6 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to Lorna Woods, Professor of Internet Law and a chief begetter of the Online Safety Act about how it started with a brie and cranberry sandwich and where it’s gone from there. Talking points: How far has Lorna’s central idea, developed with Will Perrin of Carnegie, survived the turbulent politics of the last five years? Will the Act deal with addictive design and the cumulative impact of pieces of content that, taken individually, might not look that harmful? Is ...
1. New technologies, new worries?
October 15, 2023 23:00 - 33 minutes - 23.3 MBIn the first episode of a new series, Vicki and Geraldine take a look at the issues that will be looming large in tech for families over the coming months. We cover the metaverse - or, as Vicki prefers to call it, online immersive experiences; we consider how much money children are spending, making, and losing online; and we look at the implications of AI for children’s privacy. Talking points: Is ‘remember to turn on your boundary settings’ about to become every parent’s mantra? Are fin...
6. Sarah Drummond
July 02, 2023 23:00 - 58 minutes - 40.4 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to the film maker and designer about how a design pattern library could bake in digital resilience to online products. Talking points: What is 'digital resilience' and is it a better way of thinking about safety than ‘online safety’? Why do designers need patterns? Can digital resilience designers learn from the way that 'inclusive design’ has gone mainstream? Could design patterns for digital resilience offer ways of responding to the requirements of the Childr...
5. Damian Collins
June 25, 2023 23:00 - 37 minutes - 26.1 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to the MP who has been a driving force through all the stages of the Online Safety Bill. Talking points: Given that the Online Safety Bill has had cross-party support, why has it taken such a very long time to become law? The government accepted 70 recommendations by the Joint Scrutiny Committee, which Damian Collins chaired. What is he pleased about having altered? Does he foresee further changes in response to amendments from the House of Lords? Can the Bill w...
4. What exactly is media literacy?
June 18, 2023 23:00 - 33 minutes - 23.2 MBVicki and Geraldine discuss why media literacy is having a moment. When Parent Zone asked teachers to define media literacy, many couldn’t do so. What do we mean by media literacy - and what does it look like in practice? Talking points: Media literacy has been yoked to the Online Safety Bill from the outset - but now it’s been taken out of the Bill, to be dealt with elsewhere. Is the government downgrading media literacy? What’s the difference between online safety and media literacy? I...
3. Jonathan Baggaley
June 11, 2023 23:00 - 52 minutes - 36.3 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to the Chief Executive of the PSHE Association about the current backlash against relationships and sex education. Has RSE fallen victim to the culture wars? Will the government’s review change sex education? Talking points: Are parents being told enough about what their children are being taught? Are children, as claimed in parliament, being taught that there are 72 genders? Should outside providers of RSE have other interests - either blogging about sex or, as ...
2. Nick Poole
June 04, 2023 23:00 - 45 minutes - 31.3 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to the Chair of Wikimedia UK and Chief Executive of the Institute of Librarians and Information Professionals, Cilip, about media literacy, librarians, and libraries in an age of search engines and AI. Talking points: Why is media literacy having a moment, especially in government? How are people supposed to develop media literacy when no one knows what it is?Why is Artificial Intelligence not actually very intelligent? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Fol...
1. Does the Online Safety Bill rely on something unworkable?
May 28, 2023 23:00 - 37 minutes - 25.8 MBVicki and Geraldine discuss Parent Zone’s paper, Tools: A False Hope?, looking at user empowerment tools, which are often seen as a 'silver bullet' in discussions about keeping both children and adults safe online. But will they actually work? How long would it take to set up all the tools on all your favourite platforms and services? (Spoiler alert: quite a long while.) How effective are tools anyway? Who knows what happens to all the data that has to be collected for the tools to work?...
8. Season Roundup: Are people in the know giving up on the Online Safety Bill?
March 26, 2023 23:00 - 50 minutes - 35.1 MBVicki and Geraldine chew over the issues raised in the latest season of podcasts, covering everything from football to affairs with Draco Malfoy. Talking points: Is establishing the principle of regulation worth flawed legislation? How flawed is the Online Safety Bill, exactly? What hope now for less racist hate speech and online violence against women and girls? Can children truly be safe online if the rest of the internet remains toxic? What do we get wrong about the way children liv...
7. Shift Tok: should you be worried?
March 20, 2023 00:00 - 38 minutes - 26.4 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to Natalie Foos, Director of Voice Box, about her fascinating report on Reality Shifting, a huge phenomenon (2bn+ views for the #RealityShifting hashtag) involving young people transferring their consciousness to their ‘desired reality’. More than daydreaming or fantasising (its adherents insist), it frequently involves inhabiting a parallel universe - Hogwarts is very popular - and can be so appealing that young people want to leave their ‘current reality’ altogethe...
6. Is Chat GPT going to scupper online safety legislation before it’s even passed?
March 13, 2023 00:00 - 51 minutes - 35.8 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to Andy Burrows, freelance tech policy consultant and expert on child safety through his work with NSPCC. They discuss whether generative AI like Chat GPT could disrupt not only how teachers mark homework, but also all the efforts we have put into keeping children safe online Talking points: Are we making the same mistakes all over again with generative AI that we made before, retrofitting child safety only when it’s too late? Is it possible to make the internet s...
5. What’s gone wrong with the Online Safety Bill?
March 06, 2023 00:00 - 52 minutes - 36.3 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to Ellen Judson of Demos and Kyle Taylor of Fair Vote, who say they can no longer support the Online Safety Bill. Both have been keen supporters of regulation. They talk us through what they see as various wrong turns for the Bill. Talking points: Why a separate internet for children could be a disaster. Why the Online Safety Bill could turn the UK into a haven for disinformation. Why banning content that’s illegal, rather than regulating for activity that’s lega...
4. Mariya Stoilova
February 27, 2023 00:00 - 51 minutes - 35.5 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to the LSE academic working on the relationship between children’s digital skills and their mental health. Talking points: What we’ve got wrong about the links between being online and poor mental health. How young people are gaming the algorithms to protect themselves Can technical skills without critical thinking be dangerous for children? Are age verification and blocking tools, as promised by the Online Safety Bill, the silver bullet for child protection tha...
3. Seyi Akiwowo
February 20, 2023 00:00 - 42 minutes - 29.2 MBVicki and Geraldine speak to the founder of Glitch, the online charity campaigning to end hate speech online against women and girls with a particular focus on Black and minoritised communities. Talking points: When women become targets of online hate, why are they so often asked what they did to deserve it? Or told, ‘if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen'? Why are we tolerant of behaviour online that we would never accept offline, whether it’s actually illegal or not? How ...
2. Sanjay Bhandari
February 13, 2023 00:00 - 59 minutes - 40.9 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to the CEO of Kick It Out about hate speech in football, online and off. Talking points: How can racism in football both be getting better and worse? Is the problem in elite clubs or at grassroots? Given what happened over LGBT rights at the World Cup, is Fifa fit for purpose? Will the Online Safety Bill prioritise freedom from harm over freedom of reach? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the latest on our work o...
1. Lynn Perry
February 06, 2023 00:00 - 46 minutes - 32.4 MBAs the Online Safety Bill returns to parliament, Vicki and Geraldine talk to the CEO of Barnardo’s, which supports many of Britain’s most vulnerable children, about how much difference it could make. Talking points: What would the world have looked like if previous policies to intervene early in children’s lives - like Sure Start - had continued at the same level? Can regulation make the internet safer for vulnerable children without closing the doors on children’s exploration and express...
12. Return of the Online Safety Bill
December 19, 2022 00:00 - 43 minutes - 30.4 MBAs a revised Bill comes back to parliament under a new-look government, Vicki and Geraldine discuss what’s changed, and whether it’s for better or worse. Talking points: Where are we? The ’triple shield’ - better than ‘legal but harmful'? Can end-to-end encrypted messages ever be scanned for child sexual abuse material and terrorism without compromising privacy? The Bill depends heavily on age assurance tools. How long is it going to take to get public buy-in? Can you really protect chi...
11. Kat Dixon
December 12, 2022 00:00 - 44 minutes - 30.5 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to Kat Dixon, who spent the summer of 2022 exploring the ways data poverty damages people’s ability to live fully, as well as a host of really exciting local initiatives to counteract it. Talking points: Why you don’t have to be poor to experience data poverty. Solutions to data poverty exist, but some are much less desirable than others. What makes the difference? How far could a new national strategy for solving data poverty help with the UK’s crisis of low pro...
10. Simeon Yates
December 05, 2022 00:00 - 43 minutes - 29.9 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to the Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Liverpool about why Britain has too narrow a view of digital literacy - and a quite shocking amount of digital illiteracy. Talking points: Why media literacy means understanding what data’s being collected about you and why. Not everyone’s workplace requires digital skills. How can adults stay up to date? Why are digital skills seen as something that’s good for us, rather than something that’s fun? Tech Sh...
9. Natalia Kucirkova
November 28, 2022 00:00 - 41 minutes - 28.7 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to the Professor of reading and children’s development at the Open University, an expert on children’s digital books. Are digital books the future of children’s reading? - Can digital books appeal to a wider range of children than print books? - Digital books have the potential to unlock the imagination and children’s creativity. Are they living up to their promise? - There is an overlap between children’s digital books and games. Could books go the way of gaming ...
8. Ofcom’s Anna-Sophie Harling and Caroline Cason
November 21, 2022 00:00 - 49 minutes - 34.3 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to Ofcom about regulating the internet. What have we learnt so far? Talking points: Why do parents help their children to dodge the system? Can you keep legal but harmful content and protect children? What can we learn from Ofcom’s regulation of video sharing platforms, which is already up and running? Link to the Ofcom blog: How old is your child online? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the latest on our work on...
7. Aiman El Aman
November 14, 2022 00:00 - 34 minutes - 23.6 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to a psychiatrist from Kingston University who studies the relationship between children’s vulnerability and their likelihood of encountering online harm. Talking points: Which types of vulnerability predict which harms? Why is better mental health the key to breaking the link between vulnerability and online harm? Why are rules not very useful in helping children to avoid online risk? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media fo...
6. Kira Allman
November 07, 2022 10:00 - 1 hour - 41.7 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to digital inequalities expert Kira Allman, recently appointed Senior Digital Policy Officer at Manchester City Council, about why we so often get ‘the digital divide’ wrong, why thinking of digital infrastructure as being like water is helpful, and the prospects for AI that works for human beings. Talking points: What’s the point of local digital policies when the internet is global? Why the digital divide is a rubbish concept. How exclusion is baked into techno...
5. Gay and Roxy Longworth
October 31, 2022 00:00 - 38 minutes - 26.4 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to a mother and daughter, authors of a new book, When You Lose It, about the devastating consequences they suffered when Roxy was bullied into sending nudes to older boys at school. The pair are brutally honest about what happened, which included Roxy's being sectioned with psychosis. Despite their ordeal, the story is an uplifting one because it shows how resilient young people and families can be. Talking points: Is the whole business of sending nudes fundamental...
4. Conference!
October 23, 2022 23:00 - 45 minutes - 31.1 MBVicki and Geraldine look back at Digital Families 2022, held live at the RSA and streamed online, talking through speaker insights and their fave bits. Talking points: Media literacy and regulation: where does the balance lie between providers and users for safety and thriving online? Why pornography is extreme surveillance capitalism. How children’s playgrounds are becoming rapaciously commercial. Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the la...
3. Sam Gilbert
October 16, 2022 23:00 - 35 minutes - 24.4 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to the expert on Crypto, Web 3 and the Metaverse about what the future is going to look like - and learn it might involve child labour. Talking points: Should Parent Zone be getting into Crypto? What are the online harms of the future web? Is the future of the web the financialisation of all our relationships? 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...
2. Callum Hood
October 09, 2022 23:00 - 52 minutes - 36.5 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to Callum Hood, Head of Research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, about their recently published report on incels. Talking points: How is incel culture linked to body image and unemployment support for young men? How is the demeaning of older women is associated with child sexual abuse? How to explain the paradox that incel communities can be inventive and creative yet utterly nihilistic? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on so...
1. Damon de Ionno
October 02, 2022 23:00 - 48 minutes - 33.9 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to the Managing Director of Revealing Reality, the organisation researching technology, media and online harms for the DCMS, Ofcom and others. They cover the sending and sharing of nude images, the possible ditching of ‘legal but harmful’ from the Online Safety Bill, and the shortcomings of age assurance. Talking points: How has sending nude images become both routine and a form of abuse? Sex positivity: an aspect of privilege? Why boys and girls have different a...
16. Season roundup
May 22, 2022 23:00 - 34 minutes - 23.9 MBVicki and Geraldine look back on the latest Tech Shock season and talk about how its themes intersect with Parent Zone’s wider work. Talking points: Why has media literacy become the buzzword of the moment? Are we about to see the end of children freely accessing hardcore pornogoraphy? Does gaming need its own regulator? 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...
15. Faith Rogow
May 15, 2022 23:00 - 56 minutes - 38.9 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to the leading expert on media literacy about the need to make the very youngest children aware of how the digital world works. Talking points: Why start media literacy before children can even read? How do we make young children question information without making them suspicious of the world around them? Functional illiteracy has remained stubbornly high in the UK for decades - can media literacy do better? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent...
14. Heather Wardle
May 08, 2022 23:00 - 43 minutes - 30.4 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to a leading researcher about whether children are being groomed to gamble. Talking points: Why has gambling become so important to gaming? Are gambling laws inadequate for the age of the internet? Does exposing children to online gambling mean more problem gamblers in future? 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 Shotbolt. Tec...
13. Elly Hanson
May 01, 2022 23:00 - 45 minutes - 31.4 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to a leading researcher into the effects of pornography about how some of the most sophisticated technology companies on the planet are manipulating human sexuality for profit. Talking points: Do parents underestimate the scale and nature of the pornography children are seeing? Are boys and girls affected equally? Why is liberal vs conservative or sex-positive vs censorship now an inadequate way of looking at the pornography debate? How is pornography increasin...
12. John Carr
April 24, 2022 23:00 - 40 minutes - 28.3 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to John Carr, writer, campaigner and adviser to charities and governments, about whether the UK is finally about to see laws to stop children accessing online pornography. Talking points: Why has the government been so slow about stopping children accessing pornography online? Is the Online Safety Bill going to protect children effectively? Is proposed end-to-end encryption of major messaging services going to hide child sexual exploitation and abuse? Tech Shoc...
11. Marc Feldman and Natalie Foos
April 17, 2022 23:00 - 40 minutes - 27.9 MBAs Voice Box publishes a report on Munchausen Syndrome by Internet, Vicki and Geraldine speak to the lead author, Natalie Foos, and the world’s foremost expert on the disorder, Dr Marc Feldman. Talking points: Trolling or mental health disorder? Why are so many mental health organisations nervous of talking about Munchausen by internet? What are the warning signs that someone is faking a disorder online? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all ...
10. Michelle Drouin
April 10, 2022 23:00 - 38 minutes - 26.8 MBWe’re obsessed with our phones and we’re obsessed with relationships. Vicki and Geraldine talk to the academic who studies how one is changing the other. Talking points: When you’re watching TV and your partner picks up their phone, should you put the television on pause? Back-burner partners: how technology is encouraging us to keep our romantic options open. Facebook is increasingly cited in divorces. Has it become too easy to cheat? Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Pa...
9. Frank Kelly
April 03, 2022 23:00 - 40 minutes - 28.1 MBThis week’s guest is the lead researcher of a recent report for the Royal Society, The Online Information Environment. Frank Kelly, Professor of the Mathematics of Systems at Cambridge University, talks to Vicki and Geraldine about scientific misinformation. Talking points: Who decides what’s scientific misinformation anyway? Why taking down disinformation can make matters worse. How going for a babyccino could set your child on the path to mathematical competence and scientific litera...
8. Tim Gill
March 27, 2022 23:00 - 46 minutes - 31.8 MBGeraldine talks to Tim Gill, expert on children’s play, about the links between physical play and playing online. Talking points: What can children learn about navigating the internet from climbing trees? Why are playgrounds a problem? How do you tell the difference between a big, dangerous risk and a good, resilience-building risk? 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. ...
7. Pernille Tranberg
March 14, 2022 00:00 - 34 minutes - 23.9 MBVicki and Geraldine talk to the Danish writer and think-tanker, Pernille Tranberg, about her work helping children understand why data privacy matters. Talking points: Why we're all public figures now. Is encryption the answer? Will we end up age-gating the internet? 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 Shotbolt. Tech Shock is produced and edited by T...