This book evidences the cyclical failures of online safety policy and challenge conventional policy and educational approaches to tackling online harms, and provide a robust argument for a critical, evidence-based approaches which align with the needs of those we claim to wish to protect. It argues for a move away from knee jerk, headline grabbing and subjective policy development. In drawing parallels from the drug policy world, contrasting the increasingly progressive and evidence based ...

This book explores the use of technology in young people’s social lives against a backdrop of “online safety measures” put in place by the UK government to ensure safe and risk free engagement with online services. The UK landscape is used as a case study to compare the grass roots of digital behaviours with attempts by policy makers to control access and prohibit “bad” behaviours. In conducting an analysis of current UK policy positions and media perspectives against ethnographic research...

This second volume of Online Resilience and Wellbeing in Young People explores online resilience and safety from a new perspective, by drawing extensively upon the youth voice. While “online safety” as a concept has now existed for well over ten years, the majority of policy and narrative is driven by preventative and adultist views of ensuring safety from harm. Underpinned by extensive empirical work, this book argues that safety, or freedom from harm, is not an achievable goal and we sho...

The digital world is a place where even the most informed parents and teachers can feel one pace behind children. Bombarded with scare stories about the risks of everyday Internet interactions for young people, those caring for them are frequently left to navigate online minefields more or less on their own. This book is here to help.Two leading experts on digital childhoods, Dr Sandra Leaton Gray and Professor Andy Phippen, explore the realities of growing up online in the 21st cen...

The Revenge Porn Helpline was founded in 2015 following the criminalisation of the sharing of intimate images without consent and has received over 75,000 cases. This accessible book uses this significant empirical resource to not only study the nature and evolution of Intimate Image Abuse (IIA) but also to study how victims are supported and how the wider ecosystem around victims responds. It comes from authors who have been involved with the Helpline since before its inception and have b...

Posing fundamental questions around the worth of knowledge creation and the social value of in-depth research, this volume offers a novel approach by exploring why impact is important in academic research, rather than explaining how it should be conducted.Using qualitative data to unpack what research impact really constitutes, this book foregrounds the practicalities of achieving impactful, high-quality academic research, and argues for the importance of best practice in instillin...

This book explores the online behavior and safeguarding of children with special education needs (SEN) in the digital world. Founded in research which evidences key stakeholder perspectives, this book informs and guides stakeholders towards sensibly balancing risk and opportunities online with an understanding that SEN children may face some unique challenges that can place them at greater risk. To develop a child-centered approach, the authors employ an ecosystems theory approach which co...

This book considers the rapidly evolving, both legally and socially, nature of image-based abuse, for both minors and adults. Drawing mainly from UK data, legislation and case studies, it presents a thesis that the law is, at best, struggling to keep up with some fundamental issues around image based abuse, such as the sexual nature of the crimes and the long term impact on victims, and at worst, in the case of supporting minors, not fit for purpose. It shows, through empirical and legisla...

This book explores the policing response to teen sexting – the digital exchange, both consensual and non-consensual, of intimate images among youth peers. With a particular focus in England and Wales, it also considers other international responses and the challenges faced in policing youth practices with legislation being applied beyond its intended scope. It uses the police responses in England and Wales as a case study of the challenges of policy evolving the digital cultural phenomenon...

This much-needed volume fills an overlooked gap in adult safeguarding – the digital arena – in providing a comprehensive overview of policy and practice in supporting vulnerable adults online.Providing an essential analysis illustrated by recent court rulings and case studies, the authors advocate for the effective support of adults with learning disabilities and/or mental capacity issues in their digital lives without compromising their privacy and participation rights.The...

This book explores online resilience and safety from a new perspective, by drawing extensively upon the youth voice. While “online safety” as a concept has now existed for well over ten years, the majority of policy and narrative is driven by preventative and adultist views of ensuring safety from harm. Underpinned by extensive empirical work, this book argues that safety, or freedom from harm, is not an achievable goal and we should refocus upon harm reduction and risk mitigation. Fundame...

This book explores, through a children’s rights-based perspective, the emergence of a safeguarding dystopia in child online protection that has emerged from a tension between an over-reliance in technical solutions and a lack of understanding around code and algorithm capabilities. The text argues that a safeguarding dystopia results in docile children, rather than safe ones, and that we should stop seeing technology as the sole solution to online safeguarding.The reader will, thro...