Technology
What is Context ?
How young people experience life online
New tech can involve innovations, updates, or upgrades to existing devices and platforms, such as:
- new capabilities, features, or functions
- faster processing power
- improved graphics, audio and sensory
Tech can offer users new functionalities and features. It can also provide new experiences and activities. New tech might include:
- virtual reality headsets, immersive virtual online spaces and haptic tech
- generative artificial intelligence (AI), like Chat-GPT
- smart surveillance
- processes, like 3D printing
- devices, like drones
- Blockchain technologies, like cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs)
Motivations and risks
Risks
New tech can expose young people to criminal or illegal activity, like:
- cryptocurrency scams
- dark web
- sale of illegal goods or services
- start-up scams
- skin gambling
- nude sharing
- child sexual abuse material (CSAM)
New tech can expose young people to forms of online harassment, including:
New tech can expose young people to online behaviours or content that is potentially harmful, like:
Motivations
A young person might use new tech because:
- it’s a way to connect and communicate with others
- it’s entertaining
- they are curious to try it
- it has a practical benefit, for example, helping with schoolwork, skills, or hobbies
- it helps them be creative or express themselves
- they view it as a way to make money or to be financially independent
- their peers are doing so
- they enjoy the challenge some tech – like coding – can bring
- they are testing and offering feedback on tech that’s being developed
New and emerging tech can:
- make meeting and talking to people easier
- offer health benefits, for example, fitness apps or devices which monitor heart rate and sleep
- provide more immersive, realistic experiences when gaming
- help develop skills, like coding or live-streaming
- make education and learning more engaging or accessible, or of a higher quality
- help someone express themselves in new ways
- be practically useful for daily life, for example, smart devices, file-sharing, or generative AI
Young people’s voice
Young people’s experience of the context
Why might young people want to engage with this?
Because it shows that they have more power and control over people since they are hiding behind the screen and don't have to say things in real life, meaning that it won't come back on them.
Backpack Youth Advisors: Technology 17/01/24
What are the risks for young people experiencing or engaging with this online?
The risks are there are not enough knowledge online about stuff and there's sometimes fake people and on certain apps, there's not enough security.
Backpack Youth Advisors: Technology 17/01/24
Where young people explore technology online
Read more about technology
Share your experience of new technology
You can tell us about:
- other terms you might have heard
- conversations you’ve had with young people
- a related platform or app
- another related risk or harm