{"id":1518,"date":"2021-09-28T18:17:29","date_gmt":"2021-09-28T18:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialdevelopment.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/?p=1518"},"modified":"2021-09-28T18:18:07","modified_gmt":"2021-09-28T18:18:07","slug":"children-and-adults-perceptions-of-social-media-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialdevelopment.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/?p=1518","title":{"rendered":"Children and adults perceptions of social media use"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsocialdevelopment.psychologyresearch.co.uk%2F%3Fp%3D1518&amp;count=none&amp;via=SocDevLabRHUL&amp;text=Children and adults perceptions of social media use - ECHO-O Lab\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/p><h4>Dr Beatrice Hayes has published her first research paper from her PhD thesis (!), alongside her supervision team Prof Ravinder Barn, Dr Alana James, and Prof Dawn Watling.<\/h4>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1534 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/socialdevelopment.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Social-media-lens.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"308\" height=\"231\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Despite the age restrictions of social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat) typically comprising 13 years, younger children are creating profiles and interacting online. We often hear about the dangers of such use via the media and, indeed, children\u2019s use of social networking sites presents many risks. However, there are also many benefits such as strengthen pre-existing friendships online, making new friends and enhancing self-esteem via positive online feedback. We also know that parents and teachers play an important role in children\u2019s lives and are very influential in how children behave online as well as how they perceive the risks and benefits of social networking site use. To explore this, we interviewed 13 parents, 14 teachers and 15 children across the United Kingdom to find out what they perceived the risks and benefits of social networking site use to be.<\/p>\n<p>We discovered that parents\u2019 and teachers\u2019 perceptions of social networking site use shaped children\u2019s own perceptions and subsequently how they manage their online behaviour. In particular, despite parents and teachers outlining the benefits of strengthening relationships with friends and family online, all of our adult participants identified stranger danger as a risk of children\u2019s social networking site use. Children echoed this perception and were keen to explain how they protected themselves from strangers online. However, children were less knowledgeable about the more day-to-day risks, such as falling out with friends or cyberbullying. Importantly, our paper calls for a more balanced approach to educating children about the online risks and benefits. Of course, children require protection from strangers online, however, children require a stronger understanding of the more \u201crealistic\u201d online risks as well as the many social benefits available to them. We argue that a balanced approach to educating children about their social networking site use is important for empowering children within a digital world.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read the full article in the\u00a0<em>British Journal of Educational Psychology<\/em>:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1111\/bjep.12452\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1111\/bjep.12452<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TweetDr Beatrice Hayes has published her first research paper from her PhD thesis (!), alongside her supervision team Prof Ravinder Barn, Dr Alana James, and Prof Dawn Watling. Despite the age restrictions of social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat) typically comprising 13 years, younger children are creating profiles and interacting online. We often hear <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/socialdevelopment.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/?p=1518\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publication-announcement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialdevelopment.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialdevelopment.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialdevelopment.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialdevelopment.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialdevelopment.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1518"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/socialdevelopment.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1537,"href":"https:\/\/socialdevelopment.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518\/revisions\/1537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialdevelopment.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialdevelopment.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialdevelopment.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}