Norway: Uncovering Nordic Childhood in an Online World with Elisabeth Staksrud

Knowledge on the Nordics

Children being exposed to a certain level of risk is not always seen as a bad thing in the Nordics; exposure can give children the tools to deal with risk and help them to become resilient and independent. The attitude of caregivers, teachers and children in the Nordics to online risk also reflects this approach - while elsewhere in the world a more stringent view is often taken. How we tackle children’s online lives and behaviours is rather complex and is influenced by the cultural norms of where you live, the role of schools, as well as how policymakers and classification institutions decide to regulate in the area.

This podcast addresses everything to do with children's online behaviour, taking Norway and a range of other Nordic and non-Nordic countries as examples. On the way, it answers the following questions:
- Is screen time harmful per se?
- How do we protect children from online harm?
- How has Covid-19 and online teaching affected children’s online lives?
- And what approaches are prevalent in the Nordic countries?

Join the editor of nordics.info, Nicola Witcombe, on her virtual visit around the Nordic countries, this time to Elisabeth Staksrud, Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo to discover the answer to these questions.
This podcast was recorded in February 2021 and is the third in the series: The Nordics Uncovered: Critical Voices from the Region. The fourth in the series is an interview with Gunnþórunn Guðmundsdóttir, Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Iceland. She will be talking about Icelandic literature, Nordic Noir and how writers and cultural commentators frame the past - and how they help people to digest global crises.
Sound credits from freesound.org including mechanical keyboard sound by TolerableDruid6.

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Chapitres

1. Norway: Uncovering Nordic Childhood in an Online World with Elisabeth Staksrud (00:00:00)

2. Comparing kids' online behaviour across Europe (00:04:39)

3. An EU approach to regulation is challenging when it is so culturally dependent (00:12:00)

4. The Nordics emphasise rights of the child (00:16:20)

5. Parents feel overwhelmed about the task of protecting their children online (00:19:30)

6. Trust in the Nordics and the 'Living the Nordic Model' project at the University of Oslo (00:22:09)

7. Online schooling and people's worries in Norway during Covid lockdowns (00:26:43)

8. Digital cultivation - 'dannelse' - and how children develop their online skills in Norway (00:32:30)

9. There are more important things to worry about than the amount of screen time (00:36:10)

10. Children are good at cultivating digital skills (00:47:05)