Children are growing up in a fast changing, interactive digital society. This raises important questions: What do children experience online? How do they interact with their online world? What challenges do they face? And—perhaps most importantly—how can they behave digitally resilient? In this Sprint project, we aim to develop an empowering tool to give children a voice when it comes to their online world. Because only if we understand what they experience online, we can help them grow up to be happy, healthy, and smart media users. Together with children, educators and our partners from You!nG and Erasmus MC, we developed a practical tool with a web app that actively involves children (9-12 years) in exploring their online world – including revealing their perceptions, challenges, solutions and needs.

The current digital society makes children’s lives easier and more enjoyable in many ways and offers them many opportunities. However, digital media can also have negative effects on children’s lives and well-being. To ensure that children can participate equally and actively in the digital society in a way that benefits their well-being, there is a growing call to strengthen their digital resilience.

Additionally, children are still rarely asked to actively participate, discuss, and decide on the design and development of interventions aimed at promoting their digital resilience. It is still mainly adult professionals and policymakers who decide what is important and how to promote digital resilience (for a reflection see Rozendaal & de Jong, 2024). Children have a different perspective than adults, especially when it comes to digital media. By actively involving children in the discussion about their online world, questions, needs, perceptions, and solutions become clear. The way children see and experience their online world can enrich the perspective of adult professionals and policymakers and facilitate meaningful conversations about stimulating digital resilient behaviors in children but can also lead to more relevant and effective interventions. Finally, according to the UN convention of the right of the child (Convention on the Rights of the Child., 1989), children have the right to have a say and participate in matters affecting their daily lives.

However, professionals often struggle to engage children in a way that is meaningful and appealing. Existing tools typically focus on older adolescents, leaving a gap in understanding how to meaningfully engage pre-adolescents (aged 9–12-year-old), particularly in the area of digital resilience (Dunne et al., 2010). This age group is especially interesting given that, during this stage, children often receive their first smartphone, gaining independent online access, and encountering initial digital challenges with decreasing supervision (Beresford et al., 2023; Magis-Weinberg et al., 2021; Ofcom, 2023; Rideout et al., 2022).

Within this project, together with You!nG and Erasmus MC, we develop, co-design, and evaluate a prototype child participation tool on the topic of digital resilience. The tool aims to provide an empowering environment for children to make their voices heard about their online world and, eventually, empower them to behave more resiliently online. Within the tool, children identify their biggest online challenge, explore the obstacles that hinder resolving this challenge, and develop solutions to overcome these obstacles. They conclude with a concrete plan and define the necessary support to address their challenge effectively.

We then incorporate the feedback from the development of the children who participated in the tool into the tool’s design process. The design process consists of three developmental phases, each described in detail in this report. The report concludes with a description of the final design decisions, the final product and concrete recommendations for researchers, professionals, and policymakers aiming to meaningfully engage children in discussions about matters affecting their everyday lives. The tool is freely accessible in Dutch at www.escapeyourscreen.nl

Please note, the video below is in Dutch.

On our Movez Network website, you can find more information.

Finally, we also made a podcast at ESSB in which we talk about the participation of children in discussing their online world.

Referenties

Beresford, O., Cooney, A., Keogh, A., Flynn, E., & Messina, M. (2023). Keeping kids safer online. Online safety matters. Trends and usage report academic year 2022/2023. CyberSafeKids. https://www.cybersafekids.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/CSK_Data-Trends-Report-2023-V2-Web-Version.pdf

Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).

Magis-Weinberg, L., Ballonoff Suleiman, A., & Dahl, R. E. (2021). Context, development, and digital media: Implications for very young adolescents in LMICs. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 632713. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.632713

Ofcom. (2023). Children and parents: Media use and attitudes. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/research-and-data/media-literacy- research/children/childrens-media-use-and-attitudes-2023/childrens-media-use-and-attitudes-report-2023.pdf?v=329412

Rideout, V., Peebles, A., Mann, S., & Robb, M. B. (2022). The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens, 2021. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/8-18-census-integrated-report-final-web_0.pdf

Rozendaal, E., & de Jong, C. (2024). Digitale weerbaarheid: Een pleidooi voor participatie van kinderen. in: UNICEF-essayreeks kinderrechten in de digitale wereld, UNICEF Nederland, Universiteit Leiden en Kennisnet.