Evolving Online Safety from Childhood to Adulthood with Amanda Lenhart

About this episode

Amanda Lenhart discusses her study on digital parenting and the cyclical nature of managing technology as children grow.

Larry hosts Amanda Lenhart to discuss her newest study for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, where kids and parents used playful activities to surface challenges and brainstorm solutions for managing technology at home. Lenhart explains a key takeaway: digital parenting is cyclical—families repeatedly research, adopt, “unbox,” and then continually manage devices as children mature and new tools arrive—creating exhaustion but also building experience parents can reuse. They compare tech safety to car safety (airbags, seat belts, car seats), arguing for stronger safety-by-design defaults alongside optional fine-grained controls. They discuss shifting risks, moral panics, rapid tech change, platform incentives, social media age bans, and the importance of respectful, ongoing conversations focused on maturity signals, balance, and scaffolding kids toward independent digital adulthood. 00:00 Welcome to Doing Tech 00:29 Meet Amanda Lenhart 01:05 Inside the Cooney Study 01:40 Playful Co Design Methods 03:18 Why Younger Kids Matter 06:27 Joan Ganz Cooney Center 07:25 Parenting Tech Cycle 11:29 Exhausted Parents Burden 14:01 Safety by Design Defaults 16:38 How Tech Has Changed 17:49…

People in this episode

Host: Larry

Guest: Amanda Lenhart

Topics covered

• online safety
• digital parenting
• technology management
• children and technology
• safety by design
• parenting challenges
• social media

Keywords

• digital parenting
• technology
• safety
• children
• parents
• social media
• car safety analogy
• maturity signals

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Joan Ganz Cooney Center, Meta

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