Mariya Stoilova

Global Kids Online: Researching children’s rights globally in the digital age

Drawing on an ongoing international research project, Global Kids Online, this article examines the theoretical and methodological challenges of conducting global research on children’s rights in the digital age at a time of intense socio-technological change and contested policy development. Arguing in favour of critically rethinking existing research frameworks and measures for new circumstances, we report on the experience of designing a research toolkit and piloting this in four countries on four continents. We aim to generate national and cross-national insights that can benefit future researchers and research users concerned to build a robust evidence base to understand children’s rights in the digital age. It is hoped that such experiences will prompt wider lessons for the unfolding research and policy agenda.

Using mixed methods to research children’s online opportunities and risks in a global context: the approach of Global Kids Online

This case presents the Global Kids Online research model, revealing the challenges of researching children’s internet and mobile use in a global context, and providing practical methodological solutions. With most available research conducted in the global North while most growth in the population of young internet users is occurring in the global South, researchers are faced with the challenge of creating research tools that are both context-sensitive, yet able to capture children’s experiences of the internet on a global scale, and that allow for robust cross-country comparative approaches. The Global Kids Online methodology is designed for children aged 9-17 who use the internet at least minimally and for adult respondents (the children’s parents or carers). It includes a survey of parents and children, and individual and group interviews with children. The Global Kids Online project was developed as a collaborative initiative between the London School of Economics and Political Science, the UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti, and the EU Kids Online network to address this need for a robust global evidence base on children’s online opportunities and risks, and their effects on children’s well-being and rights, which can be used to inform national and international policy, regulation, and practice

Instrumentalising the digital: adolescents’ engagement with ICTs in low- and middle-income countries

ABSTRACT In development agendas regarding children in low-income communities, both older and emerging media are typically ignored or assumed to have beneficial powers that will redress social and gender inequality. This article builds on a recent rapid evidence review on adolescents’ digital media use and development interventions in low- and middle-income countries to examine the contexts of children and adolescents’ access to, and uses of, information and communication technology(ICT). Noting that only a handful of studies heed the significance of social class and gender as major axes of inequality for adolescents, the article scrutinises the gap between the rhetoric of ICT-based empowerment and the realities of ICT-based practice. It calls for a radical rethinking of childhood and development in light of the actual experiences, struggles, and contexts.