As part of the My First Smartphone festival at Beeld & Geluid in Hilversum (March 23-24, 2024), Chiara de Jong was interviewed in Digitaal on BNR Nieuwsradio. At what age do you give children their first smartphone? And how can you teach them to deal with the risks of their online world, while continuing to make the most of its opportunities? Chiara discusses the initial findings of the Media Movez project, a participatory study into the digital resilience of children, led by Prof. Esther Rozendaal.
There are still few scientific insights about the ideal age at which you can give children their first smartphone, such as when obtaining a driver's license. What we do know is that it is good to practice new things, such as navigating your digital world autonomously, and practice together with a more experienced person, such as a parent or other educator. Based on this reasoning, many experts believe that the age of 10-12 years old is a good time, because children are still reasonably open to help from educators and those educators are often allowed to guide children online. The social support and practical help they experience as a result appears to have a positive influence on children's digital resilience.
A first step in supporting children to behave digitally resilient online is to actively involve children in research into their digital world. They are well able to reflect on that world and indicate what help they need to behave digitally resilient online. By involving children in research and intervention development, there is a greater chance that the solutions will match their perception and experiences and therefore have a positive impact on their digital resilience online.
This does not mean that children are solely responsible for a safe digital world and for their own digitally resilient behavior within that world. We do advocate giving children some control over this. This can be done, for example, by helping them to further develop their stop-and-think ability (i.e., cognitive functioning), but also by letting them reflect on their online world and intrinsically motivate them to behave digitally resilient online.
More information: You can listen to the entire interview with Chiara de Jong, among others, here (in Dutch). The essay that Esther Rozendaal and Chiara de Jong wrote for Unicef – in the context of the digital environment of children, can be found here (in Dutch).
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Marjolein Kooistra, communication ESSB | 06 83676038 | kooistra@essb.eur.nl