Children’s engagement with digital technologies can be beneficial or detrimental to their well-being. But what do we mean by well-being? Well-being has become something of a buzzword recently, given worries about children’s mental health and cuts to welfare, and measuring it has become a way to assess policy outcomes.
This webinar will contrast diverse approaches to well-being, to understand children’s well-being in a digital world. Can we build a consensus? And how can this help us to mitigate the harms and harness the potential of digital technology to improve children’s and young people’s mental health and well-being?
Speakers: Richard Graham, Laura Lundy, David Smahel, Kitty Stewart
Chair: Sonia Livingstone
Discussant: Mariya Stoilova
This webinar took place on 29 May 2020. You can read up on the speakers’ positions here and here and watch the recorded webinar below:
This webinar is organised by CO:RE WP5 – LSE in collaboration with the eNurture network. It is the first of six webinars for the EU H2020 project CO:RE – Children Online: Research and Evidence.
Our Webinar speakers
Dr Richard Graham is a Consultant Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist and a former Clinical Director at the Tavistock Clinic. He is currently Clinical Lead for Good Thinking: London’s Digital Mental Well-being Service. He has worked extensively in digital health and e-safety for the last decade and established the first Technology Addiction Service for Young People in the UK in 2010. Richard was appointed to the Executive Board of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (2016), co-chairs the Digital Resilience Working Group, and works with the BBC as Digital Well-being Consultant to the Own It app.
Professor Laura Lundy is Co-Director of the Centre for Children’s Rights in the School of Social Sciences Education and Social Work at Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland and joint Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Children’s Rights. Her expertise is in law and children’s human rights, with a particular focus on children’s right to participate in decision-making, education rights and the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Professor Sonia Livingstone FBA, OBE works in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has published 20 books including “The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age.” She directs the projects “Children’s Data and Privacy Online,” “Global Kids Online” (with UNICEF) and “Parenting for a Digital Future”, and she is Deputy Director of the UKRI-funded “Nurture Network.” Since founding the 33 country EU Kids Online network, Sonia has advised the UK government, European Commission, European Parliament, Council of Europe, OECD and UNICEF.
Professor David Smahel, Ph.D is a Professor at Masaryk University, the Czech Republic. He is a member of Interdisciplinary Research Team on Internet and Society (IRTIS) which researches social-psychological implications of the internet and technology. His current research focuses on adolescents’ technology use and well-being, online risks, and human-computer interaction. David is the editor of Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace and has co-authored the book Digital Youth: The Role of Media in Development (Springer, 2011).
Professor Kitty Stewart is Associate Professor of Social Policy and Associate Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has a PhD in Economics from the European University Institute in Florence and worked at the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre before joining LSE in 2001. Her research interests focus on children, disadvantage and inequality, with particular interests in early childhood, maternal employment trajectories, and the social security system.
Dr Mariya Stoilova is a Post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her area of expertise is at the intersection of child rights and digital technology with a particular focus on the opportunities and risks of digital media use in the everyday lives of children and young people, data and privacy online, digital skills, and pathways to harm and well-being.
Note: By participating in the webinar you agree that your contribution can be recorded and made available online.
