An American commentator said yesterday that a couple of months ago England was viewed as the land of Harry Potter and royal weddings, and now it is apparently the land of anarchy. He has a point. It is shocking to see bored and disillusioned children and teenagers behaving on our urban streets in a way that is more like Lord of the Flies than helpful, clever, Harry Potter. William Golding’s novel describes children stranded on…
Read more

Giving tips on parenting is always a difficult area, but the news that the Coalition Government is thinking of rolling out a national campaign to help under-performing children was bound to prompt criticism (see The Telegraph as an example). This has been based on the Lib-Dem’s think tank ‘The CentreForum’s report’ which suggests a ‘5-a-day’ guideline to effective parenting. It might be the name that is unfortunate. There have been many comments over the last…
Read more

More evidence emerges of children’s (unhealthy?) engagement with digital. Research released today from charities Family Lives and Drinkaware shows that 87% of parents think children are experiencing ‘teenage’ issues before their teens. We know from our recent research for The Bailey Review on behalf of Credos that parents are very worried that their children are exposed to media content that is too old for them, but feel helpless to stop it. We have long been…
Read more

Many of us working with children and young people will be in Sheffield this week at the The Children’s Media Conference. I’m talking there alongside children’s digital whizz David Squire from DESQ about meeting the media needs of early adolescents. Our session Mind the Gap will be on Thursday at 2-3pm and again on Friday at 12.45 – 1.30 pm. In this David and I explore who early adolescents (10-14 14 year olds) are and…
Read more

In Family Kids and Youth’s research carried out for the Bailey Review on behalf of Credos – the independent research arm of the Advertising Association) parental fears centred on their child’s future: their education, their future job prospects, and social concerns such as drugs and violence. This seemed to override concerns about advertising and marketing to children, although clearly this was an issue for some parents. Parents did express unease about the lack of control…
Read more

The research I carried out for my doctorate at Cambridge highlighted the naivety and trust children have in what is completely natural for them – communicating on-line. Our recent research has shown just how vulnerable young children might be. We have observed 5 year olds talking to ‘friends’ online. While this may be completely innocent what is a concern is that frequently parents are unaware of what their children are doing. This is not neglect…
Read more

The MRS conference held last week in London took us on a journey from small children engaging with the DUKTIG range at IKEA, through the story of today’s digital kids, questions about ethics, and onto the raw and challenging world of teenage street drinkers in Tower Hamlets. Unfortunately Saher Sidhom from Great Works was unable to Chair as planned because his father was taken seriously ill. I was asked to step in at the last…
Read more

Another preoccupation for us over the last few months has been The Digital Media Study, carried out by Family Kids and Youth, and informed and helped by Marc Goodchild, Head of Children’s Interactive at the BBC, and Andrew Harrison, CEO Europe of Bestbuy and The Carphone Warehouse. We are currently sifting through 6 months of ethnographic work that has included observation and filming of children aged 5-10 using digital media, sessions in-home, diary keeping, and…
Read more

Many parents can feel guilty, and this was emphasised in the The Play Report, referred to in my previous posting. Since its publication I’ve been interviewed and consulted about this aspect in particular. I think some parents do feel self-doubt about the way in which they bring up their children, and they also feel that they should spend a lot of time playing with them. The report showed that parents feel guilty that they are…
Read more

Time has been short recently. The Play Report has pre-occupied me for the last few months, together with another major study, children and their use of digital media. Ironic that both studies have involved children and their use of spare time, and both have left us at the agency with little time to spare. But we’ve also been left with a huge sense of satisfaction from working on such interesting studies with such inspired colleagues….
Read more