WEEK 7 – Always in Progress: The future of media and tech and how to succesfully
navigate a world that is always connected
Plugged In – Chapter 15: The End
Valkenburg, P. M., & Piotrowski, J. T. (2017). Plugged in: How media attract and affect youth. Yale University Press.
In the twenty-first century, media and communication technology have penetrated all levels
of society, and they appeal to everyone: infants, children, teens, parents, teachers,
practitioners, public policy makers, politicians – everyone.
Whereas society in the 1950s was defined by collectivities (family, neighborhood, religious
circle), today’s network society revolves around the individual.2 Every individual member is
part of different networks driven by communication technologies. We are familiar with the
image of a contemporary family sitting in a restaurant, parents and children glued to their
own phones, unaware of one another, and communicating via e-mail, Facebook, WhatsApp,
Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat. In a network society, parents are confronted with a variety of
conflicting, often short-lived beliefs about family matters, including, for example, messages
about the appropriateness of media in children’s lives or about the role that parents “should”
play in managing their children’s media use—making today’s parenting ever more complex.
Plugged In: Learning from the Past, Looking toward the Future
There is no question that we are all plugged in to some extent. We have televisions in our
homes, laptops on our desks, tablets in our bags, and smartphones in our pockets. The
twenty-first century has enabled us to be always connected, always available, always on. And
with this always- connected lifestyle come many questions about what it means for our health
and happiness. These questions often focus on youth, since they are typically viewed as
highly vulnerable to media effects and are, in fact, growing up almost literally plugged
in.
In this book, our goal was to address these questions by contextualizing them within the
larger field of media effects. By highlighting the nuanced nature of the relationship
between youth and media, we aimed to quell some concerns associated with media while
simultaneously highlighting those areas that should be treated with caution.
1
, This book also shows that there are other important factors that parents, practitioners, and
researchers must pay attention to. We have seen that complex games can increase teens’
cognitive skills. And we have seen that social media—when used in a healthy way—can help
adolescents build their self-esteem, enhance their peer relationships, and shape their
identities. But here too there are risks. For some youth, violent games can lead to aggressive
behavior. And for some youth, the use of social media can have important downsides, such as
cyberbullying, stranger danger, and sexual risk behavior.
From moral panic to systemic change: Making child-centered design the default
Radesky, J., & Hiniker, A. (2021). From moral panic to systemic change: Making child-centered design the default. International Journal of
Child-Computer Interaction, 100351.
Academic scholarship and public discourse about children’s digital media use often invokes
concepts such as ‘screen time’ that place the locus of responsibility on individual users and
families rather than on designers creating digital environments. In this vision article,
researchers argue that research, design, and policy frameworks that assume individual
responsibility contribute to intensive parenting messaging about children’s media use, are less
likely than systemic approaches to achieve population-level change, and produce inequities in
children’s access to positive, child-centered media.
Platforms (e.g., app marketplaces, video streaming services) act as entry points for children’s
use of digital spaces, and their designs shape children’s digital experiences. As such,
platforms are an ideal point of intervention for systemic change and have the potential to
create equitable and child-centered digital environments at an ecosystem level. The authors
contend that policies that encourage platforms to establish child-centered design as the
default user interface will both create better experiences for children and relieve pressure on
parents as gatekeepers.
Researchers have tasked industry with the responsibility of designing and maintaining
positive, equitable spaces for children, rather than expecting families to navigate a rapidly
changing and engagement-driven digital environment. As the spaces that define what content
is most visible and how it is consumed, platforms are the ideal point of intervention for
driving change across the landscape of digital content for children. The research community
can catalyze this change by investigating new metrics platforms might use to surface high-
2
