In October, 2023, the UK Online Safety Act was passed. It intends to tackle harmful online content through increased enforcement by the UK communications regulator, Ofcom, and places legal responsibility on technology companies to prevent and remove such content. The aims of the Act are in line with Goal 3 of the UNICEF strategic plan for 2022–25, which envisages that every child and adolescent is protected from violence, exploitation, and abuse. In the UK, several high-profile failings, including the role social media platforms played in the suicide of a British teenager, have demonstrated that online safety for children needs to be treated as an immediate priority.
As children and teenagers spend increasingly more time online, digital devices have become a major source of family friction. Disagreements frequently arise over privacy boundaries, and online activities. When these conflicts are unresolved, they often lead to broken trust and secretive behavior, leaving children vulnerable to digital harms like cyberbullying, toxic content, or account hacking. Therefore, it is important to create a safe and open environment for children where in order for them to share their feelings with parents. This dissertation investigates the human and technological dynamics of parent-child interactions, developing new ways to support collaborative conflict resolution and online safety through four distinct research phases. The first phase explores how to empower young children with digital safety skills. By using relatable digital storytelling, this research shows how abstract concepts like password security can be transformed into engaging, everyday habits. The second phase investigates how parents and teenagers conceptualize a “safe space”, and highlights the communication gap between a parent’s intent and a teen’s need for privacy, identifying the mechanisms required to facilitate open communication about online risks, particularly those involving social media friends. The third phase focuses on designing and evaluating technological tools to de-escalate parent-child conflict, and regulate emotions. The study shows that design features supporting privacy negotiation, designated downtime for emotional regulation, and structured feedback fosters healthy conflict management. The fourth phase explores the emerging role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in helping parents navigate emotionally-charged moments with their teenager in the realm of conflict management. This research highlights the key tension centered on whether AI can reliably support conflict management while preserving genuineness of the parent-child interaction. Together, these studies offer various design implications and empirical insights. By shifting the focus from monitoring to empowerment and emotional support, this research provides a roadmap for designing technology that helps families manage conflicts, and safely navigate the digital world together.
We can say that now social media is at the peak of its capabilities. But you need to remember that social media has both a positive side and a negative one. This issue is particularly acute when it comes to vulnerable sections of society, such as children and adolescents. UNICEF researchers cite statistics that every year 175,000 children find themselves on the Internet for the first time. At the moment, it is known that every third Internet user is a child. Despite this, we cannot fully ensure their safety. The issue of quality online content also remains relevant. In this regard, one of the main problems in the development of social media is cyberbullying.
Introduction Ensuring the safety of children and adolescents who have experienced trauma is a paramount consideration in therapeutic practices, yet research specifically addressing this within music therapy is lacking. To bridge this gap, the authors aimed to use semi-structured interviews to investigate how experienced music therapists from diverse cultural backgrounds describe providing safety while working with children and adolescents who experienced trauma.Method This research employed hermeneutic phenomenology to analyze the perspectives of 18 music therapists representing 11 countries. Their descriptions of cultivating safety and establishing secure environments were shared via online interviews and techniques from Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) were used to generate results.Results Analysis of the interviews revealed four prominent themes delineating the techniques music therapists use in their sessions to foster safety. These themes encompassed various aspects such as establishing a safe space, implementing a semi-structured program, providing opportunities for control and choice, and thoughtfully incorporating music. Collectively, these themes illuminate the approaches music therapists effectively deploy to create safety in their therapeutic sessions.Discussion The experienced music therapists in this study underscored the importance of attuning to the needs of children and adolescents who have experienced adversity. Newer practitioners may be interested in the ways they described maintaining a delicate balance between openness, flexibility, well-defined boundaries, and a reliable, caring presence. These fundamental elements support the development of safe connections and meaningful engagement, potentially fostering a sense of safety for both therapists and the young people they work with.
Hsin-I Cindy Lai, Grace Anne Thompson, Katrina Skewes McFerran
Studies of parents' online safety concerns typically centre on information privacy and on worries over unknown third parties preying on children, whereas investigations into youth perspectives on online safety have found young people to focus on threats to safety or reputation by known individuals. The case of youth who are themselves parents raises questions regarding how these differing perspectives are negotiated by individuals who are in dual roles as youth and parents. Using interview and ethnographic observation data from the longitudinal Young Parent Study in British Columbia, Canada, this analysis investigates social media and online safety practices of 113 young parents. Online safety concerns of young parents in this study focused on personal safety, their children's online privacy and image management. These concerns reflect their dual roles, integrating youth image and information management concerns with parental concerns over the safety and information privacy of their own children.
Devon L. Greyson, Cathy Chabot, Caroline Mniszak et al.
Cycling remains a popular activity for children and youth around the world, combining the fun of moving at speed with numerous health and societal benefits. However, cycling is also associated with risk for serious injury and death. Over the past decade, research has increasingly shown that improving safety for cyclists depends, in large part, on the environment they are cycling in as well as on individual safety measures such as helmet use. The pandemic provided greater opportunity for many children and youth to engage in cycling, and refocused public attention on safer cycling infrastructure such as protected bike lanes. This statement reviews the evidence supporting safer cycling infrastructure for children and youth along with the physical and mental health benefits of cycling. The advantages of active transportation for young people, and how the built environment influences their cycling safety and uptake, are discussed. An overview of measures individuals can take to improve cycling safety is followed by recommendations for clinicians, the cycling community, parents, and policy-makers.
Daniel Rosenfield, Pamela Fuselli, Suzanne M. Beno
Few studies have examined the intentions of parents and guardians to vaccinate their children younger than 18 years against COVID-19 in Ghana. Parents are the decision makers for children younger than 18 years; therefore, we examined parents' and guardians' intentions to accept the COVID-19 vaccines for their children. An online survey was conducted among 415 parents and guardians in Ghana. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 25 was used to analyse the data. We found that 73.3% of parents/guardians would allow their children to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The binary logistic regression analysis shows that parents/guardians with Senior High School education, those who believed COVID-19 could not be cured, and those who agreed and those who neither agreed nor disagreed with the statement "once the vaccine is available and approved, it would be safe" were less likely to accept COVID-19 vaccine for their children. Also, parents/guardians who neither agreed nor disagreed that "the best way to avoid the complications of COVID-19 is by being vaccinated", those who agreed that "I am of the notion that physiological/natural community is better compared to vaccine-induced immunity" and "I believe the vaccine programming may be likened to the new world order" were less likely to accept COVID-19 vaccine for their children. There is a need for public health practitioners to intensify education on the benefits and side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, as well as provide regular and up-to-date information about vaccines' safety to parents and guardians.
Frank Kyei‐Arthur, Sylvester Kyei‐Gyamfi, Martin Wiredu Agyekum et al.
AIM: To identify the safety, immunogenicity, and protective efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines in children and adolescents. METHODS: We conducted a systematic review of published studies and ongoing clinical studies related to the safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccine in children or adolescents (aged < 18 years). Databases including PubMed, Web of Science, WHO COVID-19 database, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) were searched on 23 July 2021. International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) was also searched to identify ongoing studies. RESULTS: Eight published studies with a total of 2852 children and adolescents and 28 ongoing clinical studies were included. Of the eight published studies, two were RCTs, two case series, and four case reports. The investigated COVID-19 vaccines had good safety profiles in children and adolescents. Injection site pain, fatigue, headache, and chest pain were the most common adverse events. A limited number of cases of myocarditis and pericarditis were reported. The RCTs showed that the immune response to BNT162b2 in adolescents aged 12-15 years was non-inferior to that in young people aged 16-25 years, while with 3 μg CoronaVac injection the immune response was stronger than with 1.5 μg. The efficacy of BNT162b2 was 100% (95% CI: 75.3 to 100), based on one RCT. Of the 28 ongoing clinical studies, twenty-three were interventional studies. The interventional studies were being conducted in fifteen countries, among them, China (10, 43.5%) and United States(9, 39.1%) had the highest number of ongoing trials. BNT162b2 was the most commonly studied vaccine in the ongoing trials. CONCLUSION: Two COVID-19 vaccines have potential protective effects in children and adolescents, but awareness is needed to monitor possible adverse effects after injection. Clinical studies of the COVID-19 vaccination in children and adolescents with longer follow-up time, larger sample size, and a greater variety of vaccines are still urgently needed.
COVID-19 has created a dramatic paradigm shift in education methods, which forced schools and universities to abandon the usual in-person education in favor of online education modules. Such a shift has extended the time and use of internet communication technologies (ICTs) by most, making online education platforms primary cyberattack targets. In this context, this study aims to explore parents, educators, and other caregivers' concerns about online education and the cybersecurity of their children and students. Thus, we conducted a survey-based study with 983 participants recruited through popular crowdsourcing platforms: MTurk and Prolific. Our results indicate a lack of technical support following cyber safety that the students received with the sudden transition to online education. Over 31% of our participants claimed that they never or rarely receive any communication related to cyber safety from the students' educational institutions. Additionally, our analysis shows that the student support structure needs to be trained and informed on the threats faced by children online and on the ways to mitigate these threats. Finally, we find a statistically significant difference between parents, educators, and other caregivers regarding their perceptions of children's online privacy and cyber safety. We conclude this work by providing actionable recommendations to promote privacy-preserving and digitally secure online education.
The Internet is the most popular mass media among young people. It not only provides children with powerful learning and entertainment opportunities, but it is also an environment where they can face many risks. That is why the problem of information protection of children, especially online safety, is one of the priority areas for the development of pedagogy and education not only in the USA but also in Ukraine. Publications array focusing on the main methods and tools for overcoming online risks has been analyzed. The article deals with the main types and classifications of online risks: content risks, communication risks, electronic risks and cyberbullying. Cyberbullying classification is provided: trolling, harassment, impersonation, denigration, happy slaping, fraud, online alienation, sexting and cybergrooming. The author highlights American legislation on child protection on the Internet. The strategies for implementing the above legislation into the American School System are described. The main strategies of information protection of children are identified and analyzed: media literacy, critical thinking, awareness of parents, children and teachers about online risks, adherence to the rules of online behavior. The terms media literacy, media education and critical thinking are revealed. The article provides criteria for evaluating online resources that help children effectively analyze, comprehend, and critically select information. Issues of content, source and data evaluation, site structure that develop critical skills for evaluating an online resource are described. The author defines and analyzes the main tasks of lessons for the formation of information protection of children on the Internet. The basic knowledge and skills that children need to have for working safely on the Internet are identified.
