Tech Shock - from Parent Zone
Tech Shock: Everything you always 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 ranging from pornography to gambling and at what should be done about them. Incurably optimistic, Vicki also celebrate 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 give us a five star review.
- Update frequency
- every 8 days
- Average duration
- 40 minutes
- Episodes
- 124
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2025
1. Does the Online Safety Bill rely on something unworkable?
Vicki and Geraldine discuss Parent Zone’s paper, Tools: A False Hope?, looking at user empowerment tools, which are often seen as a 'silver bullet' in discussions about keeping both children and adul…
8. Season Roundup: Are people in the know giving up on the Online Safety Bill?
Vicki and Geraldine chew over the issues raised in the latest season of podcasts, covering everything from football to affairs with Draco Malfoy.
Talking points:
- Is establishing the principle of regula…
7. Shift Tok: should you be worried?
Vicki and Geraldine talk to Natalie Foos, Director of Voice Box, about her fascinating report on Reality Shifting, a huge phenomenon (2bn+ views for the #RealityShifting hashtag) involving young peop…
6. Is Chat GPT going to scupper online safety legislation before it’s even passed?
Vicki and Geraldine talk to Andy Burrows, freelance tech policy consultant and expert on child safety through his work with NSPCC. They discuss whether generative AI like Chat GPT could disrupt not o…
5. What’s gone wrong with the Online Safety Bill?
Vicki and Geraldine talk to Ellen Judson of Demos and Kyle Taylor of Fair Vote, who say they can no longer support the Online Safety Bill. Both have been keen supporters of regulation. They talk us t…
4. Mariya Stoilova
Vicki and Geraldine talk to the LSE academic working on the relationship between children’s digital skills and their mental health.
Talking points:
- What we’ve got wrong about the links between being on…
3. Seyi Akiwowo
Vicki and Geraldine speak to the founder of Glitch, the online charity campaigning to end hate speech online against women and girls with a particular focus on Black and minoritised communities.
Talki…
2. Sanjay Bhandari
Vicki and Geraldine talk to the CEO of Kick It Out about hate speech in football, online and off.
Talking points:
- How can racism in football both be getting better and worse?
- Is the problem in elite clu…
1. Lynn Perry
As the Online Safety Bill returns to parliament, Vicki and Geraldine talk to the CEO of Barnardo’s, which supports many of Britain’s most vulnerable children, about how much difference it could make.
…
12. Return of the Online Safety Bill
As a revised Bill comes back to parliament under a new-look government, Vicki and Geraldine discuss what’s changed, and whether it’s for better or worse.
Talking points:
- Where are we?
- The ’triple shield…
11. Kat Dixon
Vicki and Geraldine talk to Kat Dixon, who spent the summer of 2022 exploring the ways data poverty damages people’s ability to live fully, as well as a host of really exciting local initiatives to c…
10. Simeon Yates
Vicki and Geraldine talk to the Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Liverpool about why Britain has too narrow a view of digital literacy - and a quite shocking amount of digital illite…
9. Natalia Kucirkova
Vicki and Geraldine talk to the Professor of reading and children’s development at the Open University, an expert on children’s digital books. Are digital books the future of children’s reading?
- Can…
8. Ofcom’s Anna-Sophie Harling and Caroline Cason
Vicki and Geraldine talk to Ofcom about regulating the internet. What have we learnt so far?
Talking points:
- Why do parents help their children to dodge the system?
- Can you keep legal but harmful conten…
7. Aiman El Aman
Vicki and Geraldine talk to a psychiatrist from Kingston University who studies the relationship between children’s vulnerability and their likelihood of encountering online harm.
Talking points:
- Which…
6. Kira Allman
Vicki and Geraldine talk to digital inequalities expert Kira Allman, recently appointed Senior Digital Policy Officer at Manchester City Council, about why we so often get ‘the digital divide’ wrong,…
5. Gay and Roxy Longworth
Vicki and Geraldine talk to a mother and daughter, authors of a new book, When You Lose It, about the devastating consequences they suffered when Roxy was bullied into sending nudes to older boys at …
4. Conference!
Vicki and Geraldine look back at Digital Families 2022, held live at the RSA and streamed online, talking through speaker insights and their fave bits.
Talking points:
- Media literacy and regulation: wh…
3. Sam Gilbert
Vicki and Geraldine talk to the expert on Crypto, Web 3 and the Metaverse about what the future is going to look like - and learn it might involve child labour.
Talking points:
- Should Parent Zone be ge…
2. Callum Hood
Vicki and Geraldine talk to Callum Hood, Head of Research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, about their recently published report on incels.
Talking points:
- How is incel culture linked to body…