As the Tech Shock podcast returns for its 11th season, Vicki is joined by Sara Grimes, McGill University professor and expert in child rights and ethical game design, to explore the views of young gamers – and the current industry at large.

2025 research from Ofcom shows that 97% of 8-17 year-olds game online. But as the industry continues to grow in popularity – and of course value – we’re left facing the same set of problems (and some newer ones to boot).

Age ratings remain confusing to the parents left to interpret them; in-game advertising is not the elephant in the room, but simply in the room; monetisation and gambling are still one step ahead of regulation; and child creators lack basic rights when it comes to intellectual property.

But to properly understand gaming in 2025 we first need to understand the lived experiences of child gamers themselves – with this also giving us a firm basis to begin asking some important questions, and demanding answers.

Talking points:

• What does direct research with children reveal about gaming and age-appropriate game design?
• Why is it that, within gaming, children aren’t viewed as serious creators with intellectual property rights?
• Is the industry now so problematic that we require a gaming regulator – and what might good regulation in such a complex space actually look like?

Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the latest on our work on helping families to thrive in the digital age. Presented by Vicki Shotbolt. Tech Shock is produced and edited by Tim Malster.

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Media literacy. It’s at the core of a three-year strategy from Ofcom, featured in DSIT’s ‘Digital Inclusion Action Plan’ and looks set to make more than just a fleeting appearance in the reviewed curriculum this autumn. It’s also one means of combating mis- and disinformation as well as online financial harms and misogyny. In short, it’s being recognised by many – and rightly so – as essential.

Designed to build critical media literacy skills across UK communities, Everyday Digital is a national media literacy programme from Parent Zone and originally funded by DSIT. The programme helps parents to understand media literacy and build simple habits which can be incorporated into their everyday lives – and those of their children.

In this episode, Vicki is joined by Everyday Digital expert and member of the Parent Zone team, Megan Rose to discuss what’s next for the programme, including how it’s being scaled to meet a growing need, and how professionals can get involved.

Talking points:

• Are parents really ever ‘hard to reach’ or do we just need more media literacy initiatives in the supermarket?
• What impact did evaluation show Everyday Digital to have, and why do we need to move away from endless pilots?
• With risks and harms evolving (alongside our responses to them) what’s next for Everyday Digital – and Parent Zone more generally?

Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the latest on our work on helping families to thrive in the digital age. Presented by Vicki Shotbolt. Tech Shock is produced and edited by Tim Malster.

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After a shift to online learning during COVID-19, EdTech – everything from digital whiteboards and eBooks to Google Classroom and virtual reality equipment – is an industry that’s gone from strength to strength in terms of size, scope and profitability.

But as the UK is beginning to see a narrative form around the virtues of a ‘screen free’ childhood and, further abroad, countries like Sweden move back to more ‘traditional’ methods of teaching, many parents are left questioning the current use of EdTech and its effect on their children.

To help understand how we should approach the growing presence of EdTech, as well as what ‘good’ EdTech might look like, Vicki is joined by Natalia Kucirkova, Professor of Early Childhood and Development at the University of Stavanger, Norway, and Director of the International Centre for EdTech Impact.

Talking points:

• Could possible harms warrant us taking the ‘precautionary principle’ when it comes to EdTech in schools?
  
  
• How exactly does ‘transparency’, ‘accountability’, and ‘fairness’ play into principles of ‘ethical’ EdTech?
  
  
• Is independent research and evaluation really enough to keep Big Tech accountable?

Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the latest on our work on helping families to thrive in the digital age. Presented by Vicki Shotbolt. Tech Shock is produced and edited by Tim Malster.

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Easily accessed tech like generative AI can facilitate the nudification of another's images, platforms’ hate speech policies around gender are suddenly being watered-down, and misogynistic content remains amplified (and deeply profitable) for those that peddle it.

The need to respond to online violence against women and girls is obvious. But where does the solution lie? Can cyberflashing and deepfake offences dissuade people who think it's ‘fine’ to objectify women? Should victims be expected to endlessly use online safety tools to deal with harassment? And can increasing the media literacy levels of some young men really unravel a wider culture where, for many, abuse is the norm?

In this episode, Vicki is joined by psychology professors and co-leads at the Centre for Protecting Women Online, Rose Capdevila and Lisa Lazard. Together, they’ll be undertaking a difficult discussion of how we might actually begin tackling violence against women and girls.

Talking points:

• Given their experiences and often ear-to-the-ground knowledge of online culture, how do we bring more young voices into the conversation?
• As issues seem to increase in severity and scale, are parents left feeling like abstinence from tech is the answer to keeping children safe?
• Is there too much emphasis on dealing with online violence only after the fact? If so, how do we adopt a preventative approach that works more upstream?

Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the latest on our work on helping families to thrive in the digital age. Presented by Vicki Shotbolt. Tech Shock is produced and edited by Tim Malster.

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In the ‘information age’ it’s easy to find any number of resources and strong opinions. This makes it more crucial than ever that we're able to filter out the noise and access evidence and information that's of a high standard and digestible.

As heated debates around tech continue – including its impact on attention spans and social media ‘addiction’ – what does the research actually say, and how can we best access it?

In this episode, Vicki is joined by researcher, popular science author and Professor of Cognitive Psychology at Utrecht University, Stefan Van der Stigchel to help answer these questions. They’ll also be discussing why robust, accessible science can help minimise easy answers, flimsy claims and viewing things through a binary lens.

Talking points:

• What do we really mean when we talk of ‘attention’ and ‘concentration’ and just how do they differ?
• Why is the ‘Like’ button – among other features – so problematic, and how could insights from cognitive psychology guide positive design choices?
• How should consumers go about separating the good popular science from the not-so-good popular science?

Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the latest on our work on helping families to thrive in the digital age. Presented by Vicki Shotbolt. Tech Shock is produced and edited by Tim Malster.

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Awareness of emerging harms gradually develops and debates around smartphone bans and social media restrictions for children are ongoing. At the same time, the series 'Adolescence' has been turning these sorts of conversations national.

With all this in mind, are we doing enough to understand the lived experiences and perspectives of young people themselves? VoiceBox is an organisation who help do just that – giving young people around the world a platform to have their say on what impacts them most, and briefing other organisations on insights and trends.

In this episode, director of VoiceBox Natalie Foos joins Vicki to offer the youth perspective on the phenomenon of ‘sharenting’ and family vlogging: something that looks increasingly part of children and young people’s lives.

Talking points:

• Just how widespread is online sharenting, and how much does the average family vlogger earn?
  
  
• As US states pass legislation protecting the legal and financial interests of children, should we now ask if family vlogging is acceptable in the first place?
  
  
• Given the unavoidable power dynamic between parent and child, can children really consent to have their image and experiences shared?

Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the latest on our work on helping families to thrive in the digital age. Presented by Vicki Shotbolt. Tech Shock is produced and edited by Tim Malster.

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With Ofcom's duties and guidance around illegal harms and content, services’ transparency, the safety of women and girls, as well as the protection of children all being published in 2025, it’s undoubtedly an important year for the implementation of the Online Safety Act.

But with geopolitics becoming more unstable, tech companies pivoting in controversial ways – including Meta rewriting its policies on ‘hateful conduct’ and removing fact-checkers – and tech like generative AI becoming part of daily life, we have to ask: is the Act too vulnerable to external changes, and can it actually regulate the online world?

The Online Safety Act Network was set up to connect and inform civil society organisations on the status of the Act and its implementation. In this episode, the Network’s director, Maeve Walsh joins Vicki to help assess how the Act is faring currently, and how it might possibly fare in the future.

Talking points:

• To what extent are Ofcom overlooking safety-by-design measures in favour of addressing harms that have already occurred?
  
  
• Why are ‘small but risky’ services so controversial in the context of the Online Safety Act?
  
  
• How might the Government strengthen the Act against both global developments and developments in tech?

Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the latest on our work on helping families to thrive in the digital age. Presented by Vicki Shotbolt. Tech Shock is produced and edited by Tim Malster.

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As both the sophistication and accessibility of AI is on the up, the ease in which someone can create and share realistic deepfakes involving ‘non-consensual intimate images’ increases also. Worryingly, schools and education settings aren't exempt from this trend.

To add to this, UCL’s Institute of Education found that – of young people who have experienced this sort of image-based sexual harassment – only 2% reported it to their school.

Kristin Woelfel is policy counsel at the Centre for Democracy and Technology. She’s also co-author of a 2024 report which, through a large-scale poll of students, teachers and parents investigated non-consensual image sharing and deepfakes. In this episode, she joins Vicki to discuss the report’s findings and to unpack this issue further.

Talking points:

• As emerging tech facilitates new possible harms, are schools actually equipped to deal with evolving forms of harassment and abuse?
  
  
• How should we respond when children and young people themselves are perpetrators of sexual harassment?
  
  
• As a first line of defence when it comes to these risks and harms, do parents have the information they need, or are they not yet part of the conversation?

Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the latest on our work on helping families to thrive in the digital age. Presented by Vicki Shotbolt. Tech Shock is produced and edited by Tim Malster.

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