• How do parents seek to bring up their children in the digital age?
• What is parents’ vision of their children’s future and that of the wider society?
• What risks and opportunities will characterise the digital future?

This blog explores the task of parenting for a digital future - both in the UK and internationally. It is part of a research project examining the host of linked questions currently absorbing parents and the wider public, as they reflect on and manage their daily lives, as well as policy-makers trying to shape the digital future and social scientists keen to track key trends.

What’s it all about?

We need a dialogue and exchange between the public and social science worlds. The public - especially, but not only, parents - face many challenges in relation to children’s changing digital lives. Some of these are in the here-and-now (e.g. should children have their own tablet computer? Are they really learning anything from playing computer games?). Some are more future-oriented (will coding help them get a good job? Are we losing our privacy in an age of digital surveillance?). Questions like these are being discussed.

Who’s this for?

This blog is for anyone involved in parenting - by which everyone with a responsibility for or interest in children’s welfare, now and in the future, is included:

• Those with a personal responsibility: parents and carers, grandparents or other relatives and mentors.
• Those with a direct professional responsibility: teachers, informal educators, childcare professionals, clinicians, social workers, etc.
• Those who advise or have responsibility for supporting parents, whether formally or informally: journalists, parenting experts and advisers, parent bloggers, media regulators, policy-makers.
• Those with a research interest in parenting, families and digital media: students and academics from diverse disciplines, think tanks and other research bodies