At Revealing Reality, we’ve conducted in-depth research with countless children across years of commissioned and self-funded work. The Ada Lovelace Institute approached us after reading a recent example – our Children’s Data Lives work for the ICO.
The Institute invited us to draw on our knowledge of childhood to produce an article that identifies the broader shifts we’ve witnessed across our research – a departure from our usual reports focused on a particular topic or sample.
Our researchers speak to children almost every day. We talk to them about their lives online and offline. We spend time with them and their families in their homes, schools, youth groups, children’s homes and youth offending institutes. We also work to understand what children struggle to articulate themselves – how platforms actually work. Our team studies online spaces in depth, using avatar-based research to explore these environments as children experience them.
We’ve been doing this for over ten years – through projects like Children’s Media Lives for Ofcom, our work with the ICO on children’s data, commissions from 5Rights, and our own self-funded research. Few organisations have been as immersed in children’s day to day experiences for so long.
We’ve watched certain aspects of childhood disappear entirely – and new dynamics emerge that previous generations never experienced.
Alongside an abridged article for the Ada Lovelace Institute’s website, today we’ve published our extended version:
If you have any interest in the state of childhood today, this long read is worth your time.
