Tech Shock - from Parent Zone
Tech Shock: everything you ever wanted to know about tech and family life. Podcasting from Parent Zone, the media literacy experts, host Vicki Shotbolt explores the upsides and downsides of family life in the digital age. With a range of expert guests, she looks at online harms to children, from pornography to gambling, and at what should be done about them. Incurably optimistic, Vicki also celebrates the many benefits of tech for children and young people, as she considers how best to live in a world in which family life is now inescapably digital. Listen every Monday, subscribe, and please give us a five star review.
Tech Shock - from Parent Zone
1: Natalie Foos: VoiceBox and AI chatbot support for parents
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In the first episode of Tech Shock's 12th season, Vicki is joined by Natalie Foos, Director of VoiceBox — a global youth organisation that surfaces the lived experience of young people for decision makers. VoiceBox has long acted as an early warning system on emerging digital risks, and their Coded Companions report, published three years ago, was one of the first to examine the risks of young people forming relationships with AI chatbots.
In this episode, Natalie shares findings from VoiceBox's latest collaboration with Parent Zone. They tested five leading AI chatbots to see how useful they are at helping parents understand the financial risks in the games their children play. The headline result: how you prompt matters more than the bot you interact with.
Talking points:
- What did the New Digital Advisors report find about AI chatbots as a tool for parents navigating financial risks in gaming and what are the chatbot personality differences parents should know about?
- Three years on from Coded Companions, how can we better support young people who find themselves in difficulty and what does the VoiceBox community think is the direction of travel for AI?
- How are gambling-like behaviours being normalised among young people, both within gaming and beyond?
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.
www
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
