Just one of the questions raised by the latest results from Ofcom’s research with children and young people.
On 7th May, Ofcom released the latest edition of its Children’s Media Lives report, along with the equivalent reports for adults, Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes and Media Lives.
It’s the 11th year of a study that tracks how children use devices and the behaviours and attitudes they have to online activities. This year’s study had 21 participants aged between eight and 17 from various backgrounds from across the UK.
Its findings are set out in four areas:
- Algorithms and feeds – how children are learning about the world
- Role play and AI – how children are connecting with others
- Filters and marketing – how children understand commercial content
- Brain rot and hyperstimulation – how the content children consume is evolving
An interesting finding is that more of the children were noticing they were spending longer consuming content that had no real meaning (‘brain rot’ content) and this was causing them some frustration. In one case, the young person reporting this also noticed they had trouble concentrating on long form content, such as films – and another reported that they felt they could be doing something more productive than spending hours looking at this kind of content.
The study noticed that for the first time, one young person was using an AI chat bot to talk to when their friends were unavailable; however, there are already concerns over these chat bots as they introduced sexual elements to the conversation, even when the subject stated their age.
As always, these reports are a fascinating insight into children and young people’s lives online.
You can read the Children’s Media Lives summary report here.
