Vicki and Geraldine chew over the issues raised in the latest season of podcasts, covering everything from football to affairs with Draco Malfoy.

Talking points:

• Is establishing the principle of regulation worth flawed legislation?
• How flawed is the Online Safety Bill, exactly?
• What hope now for less racist hate speech and online violence against women and girls?
• Can children truly be safe online if the rest of the internet remains toxic?
• What do we get wrong about the way children live online?

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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Vicki and Geraldine talk to Natalie Foos, Director of Voice Box, about her fascinating report on Reality Shifting, a huge phenomenon (2bn+ views for the #RealityShifting hashtag) involving young people transferring their consciousness to their ‘desired reality’. More than daydreaming or fantasising (its adherents insist), it frequently involves inhabiting a parallel universe - Hogwarts is very popular - and can be so appealing that young people want to leave their ‘current reality’ altogether.

Talking points:

• How is it different from daydreaming?
• How do they do it?
• Is it good for mental health or bad for mental health?

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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Vicki and Geraldine talk to Andy Burrows, freelance tech policy consultant and expert on child safety through his work with NSPCC. They discuss whether generative AI like Chat GPT could disrupt not only how teachers mark homework, but also all the efforts we have put into keeping children safe online

Talking points:

• Are we making the same mistakes all over again with generative AI that we made before, retrofitting child safety only when it’s too late?
• Is it possible to make the internet safe for children without making it much safer for adults?
• How have the continued crises in the Conservative Party turned children’s safety into a political football?

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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Vicki and Geraldine talk to Ellen Judson of Demos and Kyle Taylor of Fair Vote, who say they can no longer support the Online Safety Bill. Both have been keen supporters of regulation. They talk us through what they see as various wrong turns for the Bill.

Talking points:

• Why a separate internet for children could be a disaster.
• Why the Online Safety Bill could turn the UK into a haven for disinformation.
• Why banning content that’s illegal, rather than regulating for activity that’s legal but harmful, may look simpler, but actually makes the Bill much less likely to succeed.

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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Vicki and Geraldine talk to the LSE academic working on the relationship between children’s digital skills and their mental health.

Talking points:

• What we’ve got wrong about the links between being online and poor mental health.
• How young people are gaming the algorithms to protect themselves
• Can technical skills without critical thinking be dangerous for children?
• Are age verification and blocking tools, as promised by the Online Safety Bill, the silver bullet for child protection that’s promised?

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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Vicki and Geraldine speak to the founder of Glitch, the online charity campaigning to end hate speech online against women and girls with a particular focus on Black and minoritised communities.

Talking points:

• When women become targets of online hate, why are they so often asked what they did to deserve it? Or told, ‘if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen'?
• Why are we tolerant of behaviour online that we would never accept offline, whether it’s actually illegal or not?
• How do we balance the need for self-care with not falling prey to the ‘get out of the kitchen’ narrative?
• Why do pepetrators of online misogyny do what they do?
• What hopes for a Code of Practice on hate speech against women and girls as an adjunct to the Online Safety Bill?

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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Vicki and Geraldine talk to the CEO of Kick It Out about hate speech in football, online and off.

Talking points:

• How can racism in football both be getting better and worse?
• Is the problem in elite clubs or at grassroots?
• Given what happened over LGBT rights at the World Cup, is Fifa fit for purpose?
• Will the Online Safety Bill prioritise freedom from harm over freedom of reach?

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 the Online Safety Bill returns to parliament, Vicki and Geraldine talk to the CEO of Barnardo’s, which supports many of Britain’s most vulnerable children, about how much difference it could make.

Talking points:

• What would the world have looked like if previous policies to intervene early in children’s lives - like Sure Start - had continued at the same level?
• Can regulation make the internet safer for vulnerable children without closing the doors on children’s exploration and expression online?
• Why should age assurance for pornography be fast-tracked?

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 a revised Bill comes back to parliament under a new-look government, Vicki and Geraldine discuss what’s changed, and whether it’s for better or worse.
Talking points:

• Where are we?
• The ’triple shield’ - better than ‘legal but harmful'?
• Can end-to-end encrypted messages ever be scanned for child sexual abuse material and terrorism without compromising privacy?
• The Bill depends heavily on age assurance tools. How long is it going to take to get public buy-in?
• Can you really protect children online if the internet remains a haven for adult hate speech and toxic content

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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Vicki and Geraldine talk to Kat Dixon, who spent the summer of 2022 exploring the ways data poverty damages people’s ability to live fully, as well as a host of really exciting local initiatives to counteract it.

Talking points:

• Why you don’t have to be poor to experience data poverty.
• Solutions to data poverty exist, but some are much less desirable than others. What makes the difference?
• How far could a new national strategy for solving data poverty help with the UK’s crisis of low productivity?

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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