Trust, control, and privacy in children’s digitalized lives: introduction to the special symposium

ABSTRACT

The contribution discusses the interrelated role of privacy, control, and trust in children's experience as they are living and growing up in today's digitalized world. It has a form of guest editorial, acting as an introduction to the symposium of five articles exploring the theme from international and interdisciplinary perspectives. The overall aim of this introduction and the symposium is to offer insight into the multifaceted nature of trust, control, and privacy in digitalized environments, in which diverse children and adolescents live, learn, and develop.

KEYWORDS:

• children
• digitalization
• online environments
• trust
• control
• privacy

In today’s world, all fields of society are being increasingly influenced by media, and particularly by digital media, which have become important for children’s everyday lives. Digital media play a role in the socialisation, enculturation, and upbringing of children and adolescents in multiple ways. In the context of this special symposium, we use the term “digitalization” of children’s lives to highlight that nowadays children in the Global North are born into environments penetrated with digital media. As Marsh (2016, 2017) stresses, in this environment, children’s online and offline experiences cannot be separated from each other as they seamlessly merge together in their interactions with the world.

Many children are socialized to digital media use from an early age as they see family members using and interacting with digital media and they also begin to use these technologies themselves. A case in point is Chaudron, Di Gioia, and Gemo's (2018) qualitative study conducted across 21 European countries, which discovered that most of the children had their first contact with digital media and screens below the age of two, usually through their parents’ devices. Digitalization thus comprises a variety of technological, sociocultural, economic, and political transformation processes within which many domains of even very young children’s immediate lives and development involve digital media (Brennen & Kreiss, 2016; Livingstone & Lunt, 2014).

Digitalization processes also challenge the role and meaning of privacy, control, and trust in children’s complex lives. For instance, their privacy now also includes a domain of online privacy. Online privacy entails decisions users make about, and control they have over, information made visible about themselves and others (Ghosh, Badillo-Urquiola, & Guha et al., 2018). This control depends on social as well as technological variables. These together influence how children’s rights to privacy as individuals and as a group are being defined, negotiated, and approached within diverse practices impacting their lives, such as parenting, education, policymaking, social and health services, business, and more.

Scholars and policymakers have primarily focused attention on the safety risks to children resulting from intentional and unintentional sharing of personal information online. Here, then, the question of control remains central. However, Montgomery, Chester, and Milosevic (2017) suggest that online privacy should be considered within their broader relationship to children’s overall well-being. We argue that “trust” is equally important to children’s well-being. Trust plays a multifaceted role in today’s digitalized society, ranging from debates about trust of information presented in media (Ceron & Memoli, 2016; Fletcher & Kleis Nielsen, 2017) to trust between those engaging in online communication (Henderson & Gilding, 2004) and trust in others and our own media, digital, and online competencies (Siiman et al., 2016; Xu, Harrison, MacLeod, & Zhu, 2019).

Jøsang and Presti (2004) usefully defined trust as a “feeling of relative security, even though negative consequences are possible” (p. 135). To be trusted, trusting themselves, and be capable of trusting others may have a positive and empowering impact on children and young people’s immediate and future well-being (McGeer, 2008). Likewise, there may be harmful consequences when trust is compromised by being misjudged and/or taken advantage of. Trust and control are therefore not mutually exclusive, nor do they represent opposite positions (Hartikainen, Iivari, & Kinnula, 2016). Instead, they are two sides of the same coin.

To consider privacy, control, and trust in relation to each other offers different perspectives on the role of digital media in children, adolescents, and families’ everyday lives. How are young people handling privacy concerns and new possibilities for control, while they negotiate whom and what to trust in a digital media environment? These and related questions were addressed at the International Communication Association (ICA) pre-conference on “Trust, control, and privacy: Mediatization of childhood and adolescence in the digital age,” held in Prague in 2018. The pre-conference was organised by the Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism (Charles University, Czech Republic), ECREA TWG Children Youth and Media, ECREA Section on Mediatization, ICA Children Adolescents and Media Division, and the Institute for Research of Children, Youth and Family (Masaryk University, Czech Republic).

Delegates from various academic fields and geographic locations converged there to discuss the concepts of trust, control, and privacy, and how they are constructed, negotiated, and practised in the context of children and young people’s public and private digital lives. Leading to this special symposium in the Journal of Children and Media (JOCAM), five international contributions were selected to provide readers insight into how questions of trust, control, and privacy in children and young people’s lives can be addressed from media and communication, as well as legal, perspectives.

The symposium opens with Dias and Brito’s article on parental mediation practices in Portugal. With a focus on the negotiation of mobile apps, they show how families with young children are solving the dilemma between privacy and protection by building trust. They illustrate how parents are coping with contrasting perceptions on digital media and how they negotiate their parenting styles with their children by the building of trust as a central mediator.

The perspective shifts from children to adolescents, and from mobile apps to Youtube, with Maropo, Jorge, and Tomaz’s article. In a case study of two popular teenage vloggers, one from Portugal and one from Brazil, they provide rich insights into how such teenagers manage intimacy in the narration of their personal lives, and how they negotiate trust between them and their followers. The case studies reveal strong similarities between the vlogger’s practices for constructing intimacy and trust with their peer audiences.

Milosevic and Vladisavljevic focus on Norwegian children’s perception of social media companies’ cyberbullying policies, moving from a single user to social media platforms, while interrogating the effectiveness of their anti-bullying tools. Informed by the framework of children’s rights, they examine whether children are aware of social media companies’ mechanisms against cyberbullying, if they find them helpful, and if they use them. Milosevic and Vladisavljevic also discuss children’s perceptions of the companies’ responsibility for providing assistance in bullying incidents.

Milkaite and Lievens then analyse the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with regard to children and their ability to control their data. They evaluate how child-friendly transparency of data-driven services could be enacted through an in-depth analysis of Article 12 GDPR guidelines of data protection authorities and existing data protection policies for online services that are commonly used by children and adolescents. The collection of papers closes with an article on trust, control, and privacy in the context of sexting among children by Chatziniolaou and Lievens. From a legal perspective, they reflect on the concepts of trust, control, and privacy as prerequisites to engage in sexting and explore the extent to which legislative instruments enable the legitimate exploration and expression of one’s sexual identity, as well as their aim to minimise adverse consequences thereof.

This symposium highlights the challenges and opportunities of researching trust, control, and privacy in the context of children’s digitalized lives. Many questions arise where simple answers are elusive. Often, a single perspective is neither satisfactory nor sufficient. These interdisciplinary and international examinations offer insight into the multifaceted nature of trust, control, and privacy in digitalized environments, in which diverse children live, learn, and develop. These articles provide insightful, initial contributions to the topic. We, therefore, hope that this symposium will encourage further empirical research and academic discourse about children’s digital lives that focus on privacy, trust, and control in relation to each other.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Markéta Supa

Dr Markéta Supa (neé Zezulková) is an Assistant Professor at Charles University (Czech Rep.), an Affiliated Faculty Member of the Media Education Lab (USA), and a Fellow of Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (UK). She focuses on media experience and learning of children living in diverse contexts. She is a Fellow of HEA, an Assistant Editor of Media Education Research Journal, and a NESET Network Member.

Christine W. Trültzsch-Wijnen

Dr Christine W. Trültzsch-Wijnen is a Professor for Media Education at the Salzburg University of Education Stefan Zweig (Austria) and the Head of the Centre of Competence in Media Education and E-Learning. Her research focusses on audience research and internet use (esp. children and youth), media literacy, media education, and the role of media in the process of socialization.