🚸 More Than Robots #93 September 2025

the hurl and gliding / Rebuffed the big wind - Gerard Manley Hopkins The great, tricky return to school and other routines has begun

the hurl and gliding / Rebuffed the big wind - Gerard Manley Hopkins

The great, tricky return to school and other routines has begun. Here's a bumper load of things to go along with the new pencil case and too big jumper.

📖 Research

Children’s Passive Online Measurement

The services that children spent most time on were YouTube and Snapchat – combined, they accounted for over half (52%, 1 hour 31 minutes) of the average time spent by UK 8-14-yearolds. Roblox is the top-reaching games app, reaching 61% of UK online 8-14-year-olds.

The Anatomy of the South Korean Deepfake Crisis

These are not distant problems. Warning signs are already appearing in the UK and other countries. This signals a dangerous vulnerability to similar outbreaks of organized digital violence.

Children’s Data Lives 2025

Sharing personal information in exchange for rewards in games felt like a good deal for many of the children – especially the younger ones.

Norm-enhanced prebunking

Educating individuals on how to improve their actively open-minded thinking with the use of this inoculation framework is likely to protect people against many different forms of epistemically unwarranted beliefs

10 facts about teens and social media

A larger share of teen girls than boys report getting mental health information on social media at least sometimes (40% vs. 28%).

Cyberbullying: Considerations towards a common definition

An analysis of the definitions and distinct components of cyberbullying

Protecting boys from financially motivated sexual extortion

Whilst girls are usually asked for more images of themselves, boys report that they are often being blackmailed for money

How language is hiding the real internet from you

Most internet activity is concentrated on a small number of large platforms, and from our linguistically siloed perspectives, it's easy to assume that everyone uses them in similar ways.

🧰 Resources

Everyday Digital

A 360° media literacy programme for family-facing professionals.

Online financial harms

Free lesson materials and on-demand CPD for teachers to protect pupils from a range of online financial harms that pose safeguarding as well as financial risks.

Lumo

Privacy-preserving, open source European based AI assistant. Also Chatbots and the Online Safety Act

Nerfing gender roles and rigid masculinity

A practical guide to gender-sensitive game safety and design

POWER

A free resource to help children harmed by technology-assisted sexual abuse recover safely.

💡Inspiration and opinion

The online world comes with risks – but also friendships and independence for young people with disabilities

Digital technology offers more than just access to learning for young people with special educational needs and disabilities. Also: Talk:Tech - visual and spoken resources to make it possible for any young person to describe what they are doing online.

Is Jonathan Haidt right about smartphones?

Haidt maintains that he isn’t overselling the evidence, that he is “speaking honestly about the scale of the damage" The critics are just as adamant that the science does not support Haidt’s reading of the situation. Also: Addiction Fiction: Dopamine Is Not Why Kids Love TikTok

Parenting in the digital age: Beyond Blame, bans and quick fixes

The safe uncertainty framework offers a way to think about parenting in the digital age that resists both paralysis and overconfidence.

…and finally

This is cool

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Jamie Larson
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