Childhood in the Age of Endless Screens

Broke this one out of my notes...

In December 2024, I watched Swiped: The School That Banned Smartphones, a Channel 4 documentary following a group of twelve-year-olds in the UK as they gave up smartphones for twenty-one days as part of a study conducted alongside researchers from the University of York. What struck me was not simply the temporary removal of devices, but the visible changes that followed: improved sleep, reduced anxiety, sharper concentration, more face-to-face interaction, and a noticeable shift in how the children related to one another.

It stayed with me long after the documentary ended.

Over the past few years, conversations around children and screen use have become increasingly urgent across different parts of the world. Countries such as Sweden, France, the Netherlands, and parts of Australia have introduced or debated stricter measures around smartphone use in schools. Policymakers, educators, psychologists, and parents are all attempting to navigate a reality many societies were not fully prepared for: childhood itself is now unfolding within digital and platform-driven environments.

At the same time, children themselves cannot be absent from these conversations. Too often, conversations around digital life are conducted entirely around children rather than with them. Conversations around online harms, screen use, and digital wellbeing must also take children’s own experiences and perspectives seriously. As Professor Laura Lundy, my PhD supervisor, argues through the Lundy Model of Participation, meaningful participation is not simply about allowing children to speak, but about ensuring they are genuinely heard and able to influence decisions affecting their lives (Lundy, 2007).

While many of the most visible policy conversations have emerged in Europe and other Western contexts, debates around children’s screen use are increasingly emerging across parts of the Global South too. Brazil, for instance, recently introduced restrictions on smartphone use in schools, while countries such as India, Indonesia, and South Africa have all seen growing public discussions around children’s digital wellbeing, online harms, and social media exposure.

In many parts of the Global South, culturally and socially, some communities continue to exercise forms of regulation within everyday family life itself. In many homes, children are still discouraged from prolonged screen exposure, unrestricted internet access, or excessive gaming. In some cases, screens are treated less as permanent companions and more as occasional tools or privileges.

Of course, this does not mean children in these contexts are automatically protected from digital harms. Smartphones, social media platforms, gaming environments, and immersive technologies continue to expand globally at extraordinary speed. But it does remind us that regulation does not emerge solely through policy frameworks; it is also shaped through culture, parenting norms, intergenerational relationships, and social expectations around childhood itself.

The concern is no longer simply about “screen time” in the traditional sense. It is about what prolonged digital immersion is doing to attention, socialisation, emotional regulation, learning, privacy, and identity formation. Many children are growing up in environments where boredom rarely exists, silence is uncomfortable, and constant stimulation has become normalised.

At the same time, online harms facing children have become more complex and difficult to regulate. Exposure to violent content, pornography, cyberbullying, self-harm material, algorithmic manipulation, exploitative advertising, and predatory online behaviour are no longer distant concerns. They form part of the everyday digital landscape many children navigate long before they are emotionally equipped to do so.

And as technology continues to evolve, these concerns are becoming increasingly immersive. The rise of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), interactive gaming platforms, and digitally embodied social spaces raises new questions around safety, supervision, identity, and vulnerability. Children are no longer simply browsing static online spaces; many are now participating in deeply interactive digital environments where anonymity, simulation, and constant connectivity can create new opportunities for exploitation, grooming, manipulation, and exposure to harmful behaviour.

What perhaps makes these conversations feel particularly personal to me is that I also belong to a generation that witnessed the early internet emerge in real time in my part of the world.

When I was around 12-13 years old, we had a family computer, internet access, I had a Yahoo email account from around the age of ten, and platforms such as MySpace, which at the time felt exciting, social, and entirely new. For many of us, it was our first experience of online interaction beyond physical spaces, and I mostly used it to listen to music and discover artists.

But looking back now, I also realise how unprotected many children were online.

I still remember being contacted repeatedly by a much older man online who claimed to live in the United States. He attempted to build emotional familiarity with me, professed inappropriate affection, and eventually tried to initiate sexual interaction over video chat. Even as a child, I instinctively understood something about the situation was deeply wrong, and I remember going straight to my mother.

At the time, conversations around grooming, online predators, and digital safeguarding were nowhere near as visible or developed as they are today. Children were often navigating digital spaces long before parents, schools, or governments fully understood the risks themselves.

What troubles me now is not simply that these dangers existed then, but that many of the structural conditions enabling them have become even more sophisticated, immersive, and normalised for children today.

Yet one aspect of this conversation that continues to trouble me is how normalised unrestricted access to screens has become socially. Increasingly, children are not only consuming digital life but are being permanently documented within it. Entire childhoods are now archived online before children themselves can meaningfully consent to that visibility.

This is where conversations around “sharenting” become important. The term, which broadly refers to parents sharing information, images, and aspects of their children’s lives online (Steinberg, 2017), raises deeper questions around consent, privacy, and digital identity in childhood. Many parents understandably share moments of their children’s lives online out of love, pride, humour, or connection. But in the age of platforms, data extraction, and permanent digital footprints, we also need to ask more difficult questions. What happens when childhood becomes content? What does privacy mean for children whose identities are being curated online from infancy? And what are the long-term implications of growing up permanently visible?

I do not believe technology itself is inherently harmful. Digital tools can educate, connect, create opportunities, and foster community. But I do think we are still underestimating how profoundly digital culture is reshaping childhood, family life, and human relationships more broadly. This cannot become a conversation driven solely by moral panic or individual blame. Parents are raising children within systems intentionally designed to maximise engagement and attention. Platforms, policymakers, schools, governments, technology companies, and wider societies all carry responsibility here.

But parental responsibility still matters deeply too. Children require boundaries, protection, guidance, and spaces away from constant digital exposure. Not every moment needs to be uploaded. Not every silence needs filling with a screen. And not every aspect of childhood should become publicly consumable.

Perhaps one of the most important questions we now face is this: what kind of childhoods are we collectively creating in an age where being online has become almost unavoidable?

I do not think we yet fully understand the answer.

References

Lundy, L. (2007) ‘“Voice” is not enough: Conceptualising Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child’, British Educational Research Journal, 33(6), pp. 927–942.

Steinberg, S.B. (2017) ‘Sharenting: Children’s Privacy in the Age of Social Media’, Emory Law Journal, 66(4), pp. 839–884.