Tag Archives: social media

On September 14, 2022, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center was thrilled to co-host Building a Better Tech Future for Children with our colleagues at All Tech Is Human. Dr. Elizabeth Milovidov, Senior Manager, Digital Child Safety at the LEGO Group, delivered a keynote address that inspired us all. She discussed the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) project and the importance of designing digital media experiences with children’s well-being in mind.    David Ryan Polgar (All Tech is…

This transcript of the Into the Digital Future podcast provides has been edited for clarity. Please listen to the full episode here and learn more about the series here. Alicia is the Head of Kids and Families Strategy at YouTube, where she focuses on helping children and their parents and caregivers realize their rights to more safely learn, connect, and play online. She was previously the Public Policy Lead for Kids and Families at Google, where she worked on issues…

“We used to love playing Xbox all day. That used to be great. But now that it’s all we really do or have to do, they’re always like, ‘Oh, I’m so bored of Xbox. I just wanna do something else.’” (Boy, Age 17 / Pasco County, Florida) Last year the Joan Ganz Cooney Center launched the By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences initiative. Next Gen Public Media aims to “understand the media habits of tweens and teens and…

“While new technology is connecting us to each other in different and much faster ways, these changes will necessarily have a knock-on effect to how we interact with one another, how younger generations open up to new cultures and ideas, and how we interpret this cultural Tower of Babel from one era to the next.” –Julian Vigo (Forbes, 2019) Generation Z, born mainly between 1997 and 2010, inhabit a world with 24/7/365 access to on-demand media, social media, mobile devices,…

For nine months, we have been living in the midst of a pandemic that has thrust us all into a “new normal.” Teachers and students across the country have been thrown into an abrupt experiment in remote learning since the spring. Stark equity issues have come into view, and education leaders are worried about the long-term impact of learning loss, particularly among children from lower-income families. And the stress of isolation from peers and the lack of social interaction has…

The following post is part of a series springing from the Cooney Center’s joint initiative with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences. This is a project aimed at exploring the role of public media in the lives of young people by taking stock of the current landscape and imagining a future that public media can build alongside teens and tweens. With that in mind, we are inviting public media practitioners who are already…

For the fourth part of this series, we asked experts to focus their predictions on digital play by answering the question, “How will the way children play with digital media change in the coming months and/or years as a result of the coronavirus pandemic?” Opening the black box of digital play Andrew Przybylski, PhD, is a Psychologist and Associate Professor at the University of Oxford.  Play is the fundamental activity through which humans learn, live, and adapt to the world.…

For Part 2 of the Voices on the Future of Childhood series, we asked experts to take a stab at predicting the future by offering their thoughts on “What will change in the coming months and/or years as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.”  Adults might be less judgy about teen socializing through tech Mimi Ito, PhD, is the Director of the Connected Learning Lab at the University of California, Irvine, and Co-Founder of Connected Camps, a non-profit offering online…

What is one thing you believe must be done now to improve how children and families are faring during the current crisis, specifically as it relates to the media and technology in their lives?  Make ethical design mandatory. S. Craig Watkins is the Ernest S. Sharpe Centennial Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of The Digital Edge and Don’t Knock the Hustle. Since the COVID-19 global pandemic has taken hold, our use of screens and…

What is one thing you believe must be done now to improve how children and families are faring during the current crisis, specifically as it relates to the media and technology in their lives?  Want to stay meaningfully connected? Take it from your teens. Debra Sanchez is Senior Vice President for Education and Children’s Content for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. On March 15, 2020, my family made a commitment to our community and our nation’s health. We adopted this…