Overview

Mobile devices have become ubiquitous among young people. As children spend more time online, collecting information, relaxing, having playdates, and socializing parents are following them to provide to offer support and intervene if they believe this to be necessary.

Childcare work is also often concentrated at the time when both men and women are also expected to invest heavily in their careers. The rise of double-income families and the steady increase in time parents spend on childcare across the Global North means that balancing childcare work against the demands of the paid labour market is becoming increasingly difficult.

Digital monitoring technologies (colloquially often referred to as parental control apps) are often being presented as a solution to the pressures of modern parenting.

The use of monitoring apps has spread quickly, deployed both to supervise online behaviour and to track children’s offline activities. These apps have potentially profound effects on modern parenting, children’s autonomy and development, intra-family relations and trust.

This project examines monitoring technologies and how parents use them as part of supervisory childcare. This project aims to provide the first ever broad view of how AI technologies are transforming childcare work in different societies and throw light on the intra-family issues that might arise.

This analysis will be based around two key work packages:

1. To examine parental app usage across countries and cultures;
2. To examine parental attitudes and reflections about their use, both globally and by major language.