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Tech Shock: everything you ever wanted to know about tech and family life. Podcasting from Parent Zone, the media literacy experts, host Vicki Shotbolt explores the upsides and downsides of family life in the digital age. With a range of expert guests, she looks at online harms to children, from pornography to gambling, and at what should be done about them. Incurably optimistic, Vicki also celebrates the many benefits of tech for children and young people, as she considers how best to live in a world in which family life is now inescapably digital. Listen every Monday, subscribe, and please give us a five star review.
128 Episodes
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Understanding AI has never been more critical. It’s part of most conversations around emerging tech. It raises endless questions around safety, creativity, copyright and intellectual property. The UK government, too, now has a national focus on upskilling young people for the “AI-powered jobs of the future”. ‘Experience AI’ is a programme developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Google DeepMind and delivered across the UK and internationally. It helps to improve the skills and confi...
The subject ‘RSE’ (Relationships and Sex Education) was introduced to educate pupils about sexual health as well as their relationships and intimacies with others. Is it meeting the challenge or is there a nervousness in delivery, and are we finding ways to create safe spaces that allow for open discussions? In an era not just of smartphones and social media, but easily-accessible nudification apps, rampant online misogyny, and AI bots designed to operate as romantic partners, is RSE i...
Contrary to what many of us would like to believe, gambling is not an exclusively over 18 activity – in fact it’s far from it. Popular sports and surrounding media burst at the seams with gambling ads, online gaming draws many monetisation techniques from the gambling industry, and enormously popular influencers often ‘win big’ on when livestreaming crypto casinos. But awareness of underage gambling – and child financial harms more generally – is at least increasing. And with a recent s...
As the Tech Shock podcast returns for its 11th season, Vicki is joined by Sara Grimes, McGill University professor and expert in child rights and ethical game design, to explore the views of young gamers – and the current industry at large. 2025 research from Ofcom shows that 97% of 8-17 year-olds game online. But as the industry continues to grow in popularity – and of course value – we’re left facing the same set of problems (and some newer ones to boot). Age ratings remain conf...
After a shift to online learning during COVID-19, EdTech – everything from digital whiteboards and eBooks to Google Classroom and virtual reality equipment – is an industry that’s gone from strength to strength in terms of size, scope and profitability. But as the UK is beginning to see a narrative form around the virtues of a ‘screen free’ childhood and, further abroad, countries like Sweden move back to more ‘traditional’ methods of teaching, many parents are left questioning the current u...
Easily accessed tech like generative AI can facilitate the nudification of another's images, platforms’ hate speech policies around gender are suddenly being watered-down, and misogynistic content remains amplified (and deeply profitable) for those that peddle it. The need to respond to online violence against women and girls is obvious. But where does the solution lie? Can cyberflashing and deepfake offences dissuade people who think it's ‘fine’ to objectify women? Should victims be ex...
In the ‘information age’ it’s easy to find any number of resources and strong opinions. This makes it more crucial than ever that we're able to filter out the noise and access evidence and information that's of a high standard and digestible. As heated debates around tech continue – including its impact on attention spans and social media ‘addiction’ – what does the research actually say, and how can we best access it? In this episode, Vicki is joined by researcher, popular science author a...
Awareness of emerging harms gradually develops and debates around smartphone bans and social media restrictions for children are ongoing. At the same time, the series 'Adolescence' has been turning these sorts of conversations national. With all this in mind, are we doing enough to understand the lived experiences and perspectives of young people themselves? VoiceBox is an organisation who help do just that – giving young people around the world a platform to have their say on what im...
With Ofcom's duties and guidance around illegal harms and content, services’ transparency, the safety of women and girls, as well as the protection of children all being published in 2025, it’s undoubtedly an important year for the implementation of the Online Safety Act. But with geopolitics becoming more unstable, tech companies pivoting in controversial ways – including Meta rewriting its policies on ‘hateful conduct’ and removing fact-checkers – and tech like generative AI becoming part ...
As both the sophistication and accessibility of AI is on the up, the ease in which someone can create and share realistic deepfakes involving ‘non-consensual intimate images’ increases also. Worryingly, schools and education settings aren't exempt from this trend. To add to this, UCL’s Institute of Education found that – of young people who have experienced this sort of image-based sexual harassment – only 2% reported it to their school. Kristin Woelfel is policy counsel at the Centre for D...
Research shows that consistent, authoritative at-home parenting impacts children’s learning and educational outcomes. At times though, a prevailing culture within education can mean parents receive insufficient support, and are even unfairly labelled and criticised. Similarly, the false narrative that very young children don’t use digital technology can be another obstacle to understanding not just the nature of their tech use, but also its possible benefits when it comes to learning a...
Children grow up surrounded by technology – engaging with it from birth. But how do we help parents with information, evidence-based advice and support so that those early interactions can lay the foundations for positive engagement as children grow? Supported by the Nuffield Foundation, the ‘Early years digital media literacy review’ is a new report from Parent Zone. It scopes out existing – or without giving too much away, the absence of – early years interventions: the sorts of initiatives...
The Tech Shock podcast hits double digits as it returns for its 10th season. As always, Vicki will be joined this season by a whole host of expert guests to talk all things tech, as well as taking a deep dive into new research by Parent Zone. Expect fascinating discussions around AI-generated sexual harassment in schools; ‘good enough’ parenting; violence against women and girls; and some current pros and pitfalls of the Online Safety Act. In this episode Nominet’s social impact lead,...
VoiceBox is an organisation that specialises in youth content and consultation – showcasing the talent of young creators globally. They also ensure that the youth perspective is heard through their independent research and work with tech firms, government bodies and other decision-makers. After attending the WeProtect global summit in Abu Dhabi this December, VoiceBox director Natalie Foos joins Vicki for the final episode of season nine. Together they unpack the recent WeProtect event, discu...
Digital resilience involves understanding possible risks online, knowing where to get help and having the support to recover when things go wrong, and learning from experiences. But some emerging harms can begin to shift online safety discussions away from digital resilience and more towards bans, regulation and abstinence – particularly when harms are considered to severely affect wellbeing and mental health. In this episode, Vicki is joined by professor of Human Behaviour and Technol...
AI chatbots are becoming increasingly sophisticated in how they interact with users. The insights afforded by AI tools can also be used to streamline workflows and improve efficiency across a range of organisations and their services. With the NHS reporting that one in five children and young people in England had a ‘probable mental disorder’ in 2023, have we reached a point where AI innovations could – or should – be used to help cope with a seemingly ever-growing demand for support? The Mix...
As the online world continues to develop, possible risks and harms do too. Business models can encourage the promotion of harmful content via algorithms, and children’s data is too often viewed as a commodity. Often, legislation is left scrambling to keep up with tech – and even when it’s successfully passed, evidence ‘supporting’ it can be conflicting (or simply lacking). In-between all this, the rights of children can be sidelined or infringed upon. But are we yet in a good place for...
The use of technology to assist with parenting is something that’s becoming a social norm. It's easy to understand why: parents want to know what their children are doing online, where they are when they're out of sight and what digital content they're being exposed to. Knowing your child is safe is the most fundamental of all parenting priorities. But digital parenting, particularly when it involves monitoring technology, raises questions around children’s rights to privacy. This use o...
Surveillance capitalism – the gathering, analysis and use of personal information to influence people and sell things – arguably requires losses in (or infringements on) privacy to work best. At the same time, anonymity online can bring its own risks: it may facilitate trolling as well as the spread of mis- and disinformation. User anonymity might also undermine age restrictions on online platforms and content. In this episode, Vicki is joined by privacy advocate and author Mark W...
Just two weeks ago a report from The Education Select Committee recommended that, post-election, the new government consider additional measures around screen time – and smartphone use – for children. Having previously heard from both parents and young people on the topic of a smartphone ban for under-16s, this Tech Shock special now turns its focus onto some expert viewpoints. In this episode, Vicki is joined by a member of the Parent Zone Studio to explore contributions from bot...
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