CURRENT RESEARCH
Digital childhoods: Assessing the opportunities, risks and policy frameworks for children’s engagement with the internet in Ireland
The aim of this project is to enhance our knowledge of digital childhoods from an Irish perspective. Rapid adoption of digital technologies has led to unprecedented opportunities and challenges for Irish children. Yet relatively little is known about how Ireland’s digital generation engages with networked technologies.
Building on the 2010 EU Kids Online survey of children’s use of the internet, this project consolidates and develops new research findings about Irish children’s digital experience within a comparative European framework. The project develops a critical analysis of current data on childhood, ICTs, opportunity and risk in Ireland. It augments existing quantitative data with new qualitative research on children’s understanding of internet opportunities and risks. The research provides a policy assessment of educational, e-inclusion, safety, and privacy dimensions of ICT use. It also proritises stakeholder engagement and policy action in education, digital literacy and ICT regulation.
Two main questions are addressed within this research project:
a) What are the factors that shape opportunities, risks and outcomes for children in their use of ICTs in Ireland today?
b) How can research findings inform and guide policy action in education, awareness-raising, regulation and industry engagement?
Principal Investigator: Dr. Brian O'Neill, IRCHSS Senior Research Fellow, Brian.oneill@dit.ie
Post-doctoral researcher: Dr. Thuy Dinh, thuy.dinh@dit.ie
See our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/digitalchildhoods
Supported by the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences
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