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This article examines how much parent-child interactions around the online world reflect broader, more long-standing parent-child relations and parenting dilemmas. It does so through exploring the meanings that parents give to their parenting practices and the beliefs that underlie parental mediation of their children's online activities as well as the reasons for any differences between their broader normative approach to parental mediation and their actual practices. Qualitative in-depth interviews conducted with 26 Spanish parents of children aged 9 to 16-years-old found that many parents favoured the managed progression of children towards more autonomy and gave reasons why it was important to trust older children. However, the analysis explores a range of dilemmas parents experience when trying to implement these ideals, where issues of privacy, trust and managing that progression all proved to be problematic.

This article explores a range of research issues relating to children and mobile media, including the potential growth of children’s screen time, the regulation of children’s use of these media, the challenge of managing increasing media options, effects on children’s perception of time, problems posed for parental surveillance and the domestication of mobile media within peer groups. All of these are viewed in the context of broader societal change, evolving norms of childhood and parenthood, cross-cultural variation and the existence of diversity amongst children and youth.

This article reports a content analysis of press coverage of children and the internet in order to examine cross-cultural similarities and differences in the news values framing accounts of the benefits from and risks facing children online. By comparing media reporting in 14 European countries, the study found greater coverage of online risks than opportunities across Europe, which appears to be due to the high position of crime stories on the news agenda.. Thus readers, including parents, are exposed to media representations that often show the online world as being risky for children, which may affect perceptions of the prevalence of risk. However, there is national variation in terms of which risks receive more press attention, meaning that parents in different countries are potentially sensitised to different risks.

Children's online experience, especially the risks to which they might be exposed, is an increasingly important policy and research concern. This article reports an analysis of the amount, nature and range of empirical research concerning children's online experiences across 18 European countries. Research teams in each country have collaborated, as part of the 'EU Kids Online' network, to identify, code and compare studies. In all, 235 studies were identified and coded in a publicly accessible data repository. All countries had some available evidence regarding children's online risky experiences, with strengths mainly in relation to research into access and use; several countries were found to have a richer evidence base encompassing research into online learning, literacy, participation, parental mediation and so forth. Regarding risks, more research focused on potentially harmful content than on risky forms of contact. Key research gaps included research on younger children, into mobile online platforms, and into certain types of online risk. The article concludes by observing the challenges facing researchers in this field, including the time-sensitivity of research that quickly dates, the difficulty of tailoring research to meet the needs of a demanding policy agenda, the complexity of designing projects that recognise the contextual and contingent factors that mediate children's online activities, and the ethical considerations that apply when asking children about private, transgressive or upsetting experiences.

This article deals with the contribution made by domestication research to our understanding of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in everyday life, especially in the home. It first provides a sense of the diversity of research in this tradition and how this is evolving. The article then reflects upon and illustrates different elements of research in this tradition, providing examples of how these help to explain patterns of ICT experience, the way people evaluate that experience, and what bearing it has on their lives. To contextualize domestication research further, it considers overlaps with other traditions of research before moving on to the core, and the range of methodologies that have been employed. Finally, the article examines some of the general insights from domestication research, as well as more specific applications to the commercial and policy fields.

The EU Kids Online II project built on the previous project's literature review and development of methods to generate detailed cross-national evidence about children's use, risks and harms online. The project aimed to provide comparable survey data that permit the joint elaboration of social policies for Internet use and protection for young people. It conducted in-home, face-to-face personal interviews with 9- to 16-year-olds and, separately, with one of their parents of each child interviewed, across 25 countries in Europe. Nationally representative survey samples were drawn in each country, resulting in just over 25,000 interviews with children (and parents) being carried out in total. The interviews were primarily closed-ended, with an open-ended (qualitative) element and with sensitive questions being asked privately in confidence. There are several key findings from the data collected. First, while higher use is positively correlated with higher risk online, this is not necessarily problematic as it can allow children to build resilience. Second, a majority of children are online and mobile already, making their online lives potentially as important as their offline lives. Finally, the project makes a series of recommendations for stakeholders with regard to online opportunities, awareness-raising, digital and safety skills, active and restrictive forms of parenting and children's coping strategies, all of which can positively or negatively affect a child's engagement with the online environment.

The extent to which users can be innovative or creative when using ICTs is a key undercurrent within this book. While attempting to conceptualize the innovation process in general, Mallard draws attention to various theoretical frameworks that emphasize ways in which users are creative, but suggests there are limits to that ability. In their empirical study, Battarbee and Kurvinen explore the creative process in achieving multimedia messaging, while Sotamaa examines the various levels of user innovation within the field of computing gaming ‐ examples of which are cited in this chapter. Clearly the “innovativeness” or “creativity” is important, but equally clearly it refers to a number of different activities. Reviewing past and current research on ICTs, the chapter aims to chart some of different ways in which users are innovators. 1 In fact, this has a further relevance for two other main themes of the book. One theme concerns issues to be faced in ICT development when trying to imagine users and uses. By exploring what innovatory use can mean, the levels on which it can operate, we can re-consider what types of things we should be researching if we want to understand how potential users will relate to ICTs. And this might have implications for design. The second theme is how to involve users in the design process (see also Haddon, 2002; Hoogma and Schot, 2001) Once again, if we can appreciate the different ways in which users can be creative, this can have a bearing upon the types of feedback, or input, we would want from users when asking them to evaluate their experience of ICTs.

With increasingly younger children using the Internet on their own, there is a growing need for research that examines both the risks and opportunities young children face on the web. Such information is critical for determining the ways in which children can navigate this wonderfuland dangerous world. With expert contributions from a diverse range of disciplines and a cross-national breadth, Children, Risk and Safety on the Internet examines the many online opportunities children have for learning, creativity, and communication and how they can safely access them amid the dangers of cyberbullying, pornography, and privacy invasion.Based on an impressive, in-depth survey of twenty-five thousand children carried out by the EU Kids Online network, this book presents wholly new findings that offer important counters to both the optimistic and pessimistic arguments surrounding child safety on the Internet. It finds compelling evidence that children are gaining important digital skills as well as strong strategies and social support for dealing with the Internets fast-changing terrain. At the same time, it identifies the many struggles children face, pinpointing important areas where harm can follow from risky online encounters. With a simultaneous breadth and depth of evidence and analysis, Children, Risk and Safety on the Internet provides comprehensive and important information for anyone interested in safe and positive digital experiences for our youth.