Growing up online
At ßÏßÏÊÓƵ, researchers are helping make digital spaces safer for young people.
A complex digital childhood
Today’s children and young people are the first generations for whom the online world is interwoven with their day-to-day lives.
Social media can be a place to build friendships, explore identity and express creativity. Digital platforms also open up new ways to learn. Yet alongside these opportunities lie serious risks, from cyberbullying and grooming to misinformation and data privacy concerns.
The Online Safety Act 2023 marks a major step in addressing these challenges. But legislation alone cannot answer every question about children’s experiences online. At the ßÏßÏÊÓƵ, researchers are exploring the many ways young people encounter risk online — from digital design and data use to gaming platforms, extremism and harmful body image cultures — helping to shape safer and more supportive digital spaces for the next generation.
Creating digital tools ‘with’ children
“Involving young people in shaping digital environments is essential for creating safer, more empowering online spaces,” says Dr Liam Berriman, director of the Centre for Innovation and Research in Childhood and Youth (CIRCY) at the Sussex.
CIRCY is a leading interdisciplinary research hub focused on improving the welfare of children and young people. Its work explores key themes including digital childhoods, emotional wellbeing, digital consent and the ways young people experience a rapidly changing online world.
Parents and carers are also involved in CIRCY’s work, helping researchers explore generational differences in online sharing, privacy and consent. One project examined how parents share videos of autistic children online, raising ethical questions about representation, visibility and impact.
Public sector data collected on children is another area where Dr Berriman believes families and young people need to be more meaningfully consulted, with government approaches not always reflecting young people’s views and needs. “A digital ‘safe space’ for an autistic young person will be very different from one for an LGBTQ+ young person. CIRCY works to identify what an inclusive digital world might look like.”
Dr Berriman and his colleagues also plan to explore how safeguarding works in primary and secondary schools in a digital context, consulting with teachers, parents and children.
“Things get designed for children rather than with them,” he says. “My question to people who are working with children’s data or designing digital tools is, how are you bringing children into the process to make tools that benefit them?“
When gaming becomes a gateway
There has long been concern about the effects of video games on young users, and whether they encourage dangerous or violent behaviour. Although video games are not a causal factor of violence or extremism, they can be used to facilitate harm.
Dr Suraj Lakhani, Associate Professor in Sociology and Criminology, is a leading expert exploring the intersection between video games, gaming-adjacent platforms and violent extremism.
“We have learned from terrible attacks on communities across the world, such as the massacre by a far-right violent extremist in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019, that video games and gaming-adjacent platforms have been widely used by bad actors for nefarious purposes linked to violent extremism.“
Dr Lakhani, who has authored reports for the Home Office and European Commission, has recently been appointed to the EU Knowledge Hub on Prevention of Radicalisation’s Thematic Panel on New Technologies and the Online Dimension.
The Hub brings together policymakers, practitioners and researchers working to prevent radicalisation and violent extremism across Europe. One of its core focus areas is New Technologies and the Online Dimension, which aims to address online radicalisation.
“Studying extremism is a fast-moving landscape, exacerbated by the evolution of technology,” says Dr Lakhani. “I’m honoured to receive this appointment and look forward to contributing to this important work, as well as collaborating with colleagues from across Europe.”
Looking beyond censorship
When pro-anorexia online spaces emerged at the end of the 20th century, they incited a moral panic, says Dr Gemma Cobb, Assistant Professor in Digital Culture at Sussex.
As the author of the Negotiating Thinness Online: The Cultural Politics of Pro-Anorexia, Dr Cobb has studied how these spaces, which started out on websites and forums and now populate social media platforms, have been blamed for fuelling disordered eating and perpetuating young women’s body image issues.
However, it is more complex than this argues Dr Cobb: “Eating disorders can affect people of any age and gender, and thinness as an ideal existed long before pro-anorexia online.
“Broadly speaking these spaces seek to provide users with support on living with anorexia nervosa: from recovery advice, through to ‘thinspiration’, which comprises the posting of images of thin models, celebrities, and content creators themselves with the intention of inspiring weight loss.”
Although there have been attempts to remove such content, users deploy a range of innovative tactics to circumvent censorship.
Her work urges policymakers to look beyond censorship and consider the wider cultural problem: that thinness continues to be aspirational.