Mariya Stoilova - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Mariya Stoilova
Research Papers in Economics, Nov 1, 2016
Post-Cambridge-Analytica, and post-GDPR, children are becoming increasingly aware of how their da... more Post-Cambridge-Analytica, and post-GDPR, children are becoming increasingly aware of how their data is being used online but there are still limits to their digital literacy. In this post, Sonia Livingstone, Mariya Stoilova and Rishita Nandagiri discuss how they are conceptualising issues of privacy and personal data in their latest ICO-funded research into children’s understanding of privacy and data use online. Sonia Livingstone is Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Mariya Stoilova is a Post-doctoral Research Officer on the Global Kids Online project at LSE, and an Associate Lecturer in Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Rishita Nandagiri is a PhD Candidate at the LSE’s Department of Social Policy (Demography and Population Studies) and an external Graduate Associate member of the Centre for Cultures of Reproduction, Technologies and Health, the University of Sus...
This rapid evidence review examines adolescents’ access to and use of digital media (especially m... more This rapid evidence review examines adolescents’ access to and use of digital media (especially mobile phones and the internet), together with the associated digital skills and practices, opportunities and risks, and forms of safety mediation, in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The review is especially concerned with 10- to 14-year-old girls’ digital media uses, although little evidence specifically addressed this group. It is guided by two overarching research questions: 1. What do scholars and practitioners know about how young adolescents are using digital media (computers, mobile phones and other information and communication technologies, ICTs) and the key challenges these children face? What are the opportunities involved in their use of such media and what are most significant gaps in our knowledge? 2. What evidence is there of local, national and international development programmes’ effective use of digital media to target 10- to 14-year-olds (rather than older ad...
For research precisely designed to inform policy and practice, ensuring it has the desired impact... more For research precisely designed to inform policy and practice, ensuring it has the desired impact is crucial. But tracking impact across many countries and diverse contexts can be difficult. Sonia Livingstone and Mariya Stoilova describe how the Global Kids Online project has built an impact toolkit which draws on recent empirical research with over 12,000 children. The ambition is to inform national and international policy and legislation around digital technologies, with a focus on safeguarding children’s rights. The impact toolkit contains accessible summaries of the approach, definitions, and key steps; an impact planning and monitoring framework, complete with templates and an exemplar framework; and tools for engaging key stakeholders, including guidelines on using evidence to inform policymaking, presenting findings to children, and communication strategies.
With growing concerns over children’s online privacy and the commercial uses of their data, it is... more With growing concerns over children’s online privacy and the commercial uses of their data, it is vital that children’s understandings of the digital environment, their digital skills and their capacity to consent are taken into account in designing services, regulation and policy. This project seeks to address questions and evidence gaps concerning children’s conception of privacy online, their capacity to consent, their functional skills (e.g., in understanding terms and conditions or managing privacy settings online), and their deeper critical understanding of the online environment, including both its interpersonal and, especially, its commercial dimensions (including its business models, uses of data and algorithms, forms of redress, commercial interests, systems of trust and governance). The project takes a child-centred approach, arguing that only in this way can researchers provide the needed integration of children’s understandings, online affordances, resulting experiences...
Bullying, including cyberbullying, affects a high percentage of children at different stages of t... more Bullying, including cyberbullying, affects a high percentage of children at different stages of their development, often severely undermining their health, emotional wellbeing and school performance. Victims may suffer sleep disorders, headaches, stomach pain, poor appetite and fatigue as well as feelings of low-self-esteem, anxiety, depression, shame and at times suicidal thoughts; these are psychological and emotional scars that may persist into adult life. Bullying is a key concern for children. It is one of the most frequent reasons why children call a helpline. It gains centre stage in surveys conducted with school children, and generates a special interest when opinion polls are conducted through social media with young people. The recent U-Report initiative supported by UNICEF with more than 100,000 children and young people around the world illustrates this well: nine in every ten respondents considered that bullying is a major problem; two thirds reported having been victim...
The CO:RE project is a Coordination and Support Action within the Horizon 2020 framework, which a... more The CO:RE project is a Coordination and Support Action within the Horizon 2020 framework, which aims to build an international knowledge base on the impact of technological transformations on children and youth.
Research Papers in Economics, 2016
With children making up an estimated one third of internet users worldwide, living in the ‘digita... more With children making up an estimated one third of internet users worldwide, living in the ‘digital age’ can have important implications for children’s lives. Currently, close to 80 per cent of people in Europe, North America and Australia have internet access, compared with less than 25 per cent in some parts of Africa and South Asia. The international community has recognized the importance of internet access for development, economic growth and the realization of civil rights and is actively seeking ways to ensure universal internet access to all segments of society. Children should be an important part of this process, not only because they represent a substantial percentage of internet users but also because they play an important part in shaping the internet. The internet in turn plays an important part in shaping children’s lives, culture and identities.
Aufwachsen in überwachten Umgebungen, 2021
What should children be taught about their online privacy and the uses that others may make of th... more What should children be taught about their online privacy and the uses that others may make of their personal data, and why? This chapter reports on a systematic mapping of the available evidence followed by child-centered, qualitative research interviews with children aged 11-16 years old in the UK. The aim was to discover what children of different ages already know about privacy and data online, to ask them what they want to know, and then to reflect on the educational challenges posed by the answers. For its conceptual framing, the chapter distinguishes three contexts for data use online-interpersonal, institutional (including the school) and commercial. Since these are increasingly interconnected, it is argued that children should be taught about each, to gain a critical understanding of the data ecology and business models which are driving the datafication of society and, thereby, childhood. Finally, it is proposed that, if schools could themselves demonstrate best practice in data processing-explaining school policy, practice, and opportunities for redress to their studentsthis might prove a more effective means of improving children's understanding than via the taught curriculum.
New Media & Society, 2021
Research and policy have invested in the prospect that gaining digital skills enhances children’s... more Research and policy have invested in the prospect that gaining digital skills enhances children’s and young people’s outcomes. A systematic evidence review of research on digital skills among 12- to 17-year-olds identified 34 studies that used cross-sectional survey methods to examine the association of digital skills with tangible outcomes. Two-thirds concerned the association with online opportunities or other benefits. Another third examined online risks of harm. Findings showed a positive association between digital skills and online opportunities, information benefits, and orientation to technology. Greater digital skills were indirectly linked to greater exposure to online risks, although any link to harm was unclear. While technical skills were linked with mixed or even negative outcomes, information skills were linked with positive outcomes. There was little research on the outcomes of communication or creative digital skills. Future research should examine the dimensions of...
The Handbook of Media Education Research, 2020
Media and Communication, 2020
How do children understand the privacy implications of the contemporary digital environment? This... more How do children understand the privacy implications of the contemporary digital environment? This question is pressing as technologies transform children’s lives into data which is recorded, tracked, aggregated, analysed and monetized. This article takes a child-centred, qualitative approach to charting the nature and limits of children’s understanding of privacy in digital contexts. We conducted focus group interviews with 169 UK children aged 11–16 to explore their understanding of privacy in three distinct digital contexts—interpersonal, institutional and commercial. We find, first, that children primarily conceptualize privacy in relation to interpersonal contexts, conceiving of personal information as something they have agency and control over as regards deciding when and with whom to share it, even if they do not always exercise such control. This leads them to some misapprehensions about how personal data is collected, inferred and used by organizations, be these public inst...
AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 2020
What actors and factors shape children and young people’s digital skills? And how do their digita... more What actors and factors shape children and young people’s digital skills? And how do their digital skills impact the rest of their lives? These are the two research questions addressed in this paper, along with an analysis of how the research literature to date has measured digital skills. The findings reported here come from a systematic evidence review of the antecedents and consequences of digital skills (Haddon, Cino, Doyle, Livingstone, Mascheroni and Stoilova, forthcoming) as part of the ySKILLS project funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme.
AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 2020
In the age of continuous data collection and algorithmic predictions, children’s privacy seems th... more In the age of continuous data collection and algorithmic predictions, children’s privacy seems threatened by the variety of surveillance and data practices in which parents, institutions, corporations and children themselves engage. The vast amount of data routinely collected about children as they grow up include data shared online, whether by children themselves (social media updates, web searches and browsing, data traces of their internet and smartphone use) or their parents (sharenting practices); data shared in the home, like conversations and environmental data captured by internet-connected devices such as smart speakers and internet connected toys; data shared outside the home, including educational and school apps, biometric data in schools and/or airports and stations, health data and medical records, geo-location apps or wearables, etc. Data can be knowingly shared with others, or “given off” as traces of online activities, and even inferred by algorithms that profile, c...
Contemporary Social Science, 2019
Her research covers the areas of online privacy and data protection, children's use of digital te... more Her research covers the areas of online privacy and data protection, children's use of digital technologies, well-being and family support, transformations of intimate life, citizenship and social inequalities.
This case presents the Global Kids Online research model, revealing the challenges of researching... more This case presents the Global Kids Online research model, revealing the challenges of researching children's internet and mobile use in a global context, and providing practical methodological solutions. With most available research conducted in the global North while most growth in the population of young internet users is occurring in the global South, researchers are faced with the challenge of creating research tools that are both context-sensitive, yet able to capture children's experiences of the internet on a global scale, and that allow for robust crosscountry comparative approaches. The Global Kids Online methodology is designed for children aged 9-17 who use the internet at least minimally and for adult respondents (the children's parents or carers). It includes a survey of parents and children, and individual and group interviews with children. The Global Kids Online project was developed as a collaborative initiative between the London School of Economics and Political Science, the UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti, and the EU Kids Online network to address this need for a robust global evidence base on children's online opportunities and risks, and their effects on children's well-being and rights, which can be used to inform national and international policy, regulation, and practice. Learning Outcomes By the end of this case, students should be able to: • Understand key issues related to the design, fieldwork, data analysis and management of a global research project on children and the internet • Assess the advantages of using mixed methods • Understand the key challenges and advantages of cross-national comparative research. Acknowledgements This case is based on our work with colleagues as part of the projects Global Kids Online (GKO) and Maximizing Children's Online Opportunities and Minimizing Risks (MOMRO), and draws on research published in our online research toolkit (see www.globalkidsonline.net/tools). This work was made possible by financial support from the WePROTECT Global Alliance, UNICEF, and the London School of Economics and Political Science. We would like to thank our colleagues from the Global Kids Online network and the project expert advisors for their help and guidance. Case Study Research Context, Aims and Research Questions Everyday life is increasingly infused with digital technology use to the point where the distinction between offline and online is becoming blurred (Livingstone & Bulger, 2014; Third, Bellerose, Dawkins, Keltie, & Pihl, 2014). Theoretical and methodological approaches recognizing the digital as fundamentally interwoven with the social (Couldry & Hepp, 2017; Lupton, 2015; Wajcman, 2015) are coming to the fore of contemporary social and media research. Children, too, are becoming internet users at rapidly increasing rates and at younger ages (Holloway, Green, & Livingstone, 2013), with around one in three internet users globally estimated to be under 18 (Livingstone, Carr, & Byrne, 2016). The digital environment has become an important resource facilitating children's access to information, education, and health resources, as well as offering important opportunities for communication, socializing, creativity,
Development in Practice, 2018
In development agendas regarding children in low-income communities, both older and emerging medi... more In development agendas regarding children in low-income communities, both older and emerging media are typically ignored or assumed to have beneficial powers that will redress social and gender inequality. This article builds on a recent rapid evidence review on adolescents' digital media use and development interventions in low-and middleincome countries to examine the contexts of children and adolescents' access to, and uses of, information and communication technology(ICT). Noting that only a handful of studies heed the significance of social class and gender as major axes of inequality for adolescents, the article scrutinises the gap between the rhetoric of ICT-based empowerment and the realities of ICT-based practice. It calls for a radical rethinking of childhood and development in light of the actual experiences, struggles, and contexts.
Global Studies of Childhood, 2016
Drawing on an ongoing international research project, Global Kids Online, this article examines t... more Drawing on an ongoing international research project, Global Kids Online, this article examines the theoretical and methodological challenges of conducting global research on children’s rights in the digital age at a time of intense socio-technological change and contested policy development. Arguing in favour of critically rethinking existing research frameworks and measures for new circumstances, we report on the experience of designing a research toolkit and piloting this in four countries on four continents. We aim to generate national and cross-national insights that can benefit future researchers and research users concerned to build a robust evidence base to understand children’s rights in the digital age. It is hoped that such experiences will prompt wider lessons for the unfolding research and policy agenda.
Research Papers in Economics, Nov 1, 2016
Post-Cambridge-Analytica, and post-GDPR, children are becoming increasingly aware of how their da... more Post-Cambridge-Analytica, and post-GDPR, children are becoming increasingly aware of how their data is being used online but there are still limits to their digital literacy. In this post, Sonia Livingstone, Mariya Stoilova and Rishita Nandagiri discuss how they are conceptualising issues of privacy and personal data in their latest ICO-funded research into children’s understanding of privacy and data use online. Sonia Livingstone is Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Mariya Stoilova is a Post-doctoral Research Officer on the Global Kids Online project at LSE, and an Associate Lecturer in Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Rishita Nandagiri is a PhD Candidate at the LSE’s Department of Social Policy (Demography and Population Studies) and an external Graduate Associate member of the Centre for Cultures of Reproduction, Technologies and Health, the University of Sus...
This rapid evidence review examines adolescents’ access to and use of digital media (especially m... more This rapid evidence review examines adolescents’ access to and use of digital media (especially mobile phones and the internet), together with the associated digital skills and practices, opportunities and risks, and forms of safety mediation, in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The review is especially concerned with 10- to 14-year-old girls’ digital media uses, although little evidence specifically addressed this group. It is guided by two overarching research questions: 1. What do scholars and practitioners know about how young adolescents are using digital media (computers, mobile phones and other information and communication technologies, ICTs) and the key challenges these children face? What are the opportunities involved in their use of such media and what are most significant gaps in our knowledge? 2. What evidence is there of local, national and international development programmes’ effective use of digital media to target 10- to 14-year-olds (rather than older ad...
For research precisely designed to inform policy and practice, ensuring it has the desired impact... more For research precisely designed to inform policy and practice, ensuring it has the desired impact is crucial. But tracking impact across many countries and diverse contexts can be difficult. Sonia Livingstone and Mariya Stoilova describe how the Global Kids Online project has built an impact toolkit which draws on recent empirical research with over 12,000 children. The ambition is to inform national and international policy and legislation around digital technologies, with a focus on safeguarding children’s rights. The impact toolkit contains accessible summaries of the approach, definitions, and key steps; an impact planning and monitoring framework, complete with templates and an exemplar framework; and tools for engaging key stakeholders, including guidelines on using evidence to inform policymaking, presenting findings to children, and communication strategies.
With growing concerns over children’s online privacy and the commercial uses of their data, it is... more With growing concerns over children’s online privacy and the commercial uses of their data, it is vital that children’s understandings of the digital environment, their digital skills and their capacity to consent are taken into account in designing services, regulation and policy. This project seeks to address questions and evidence gaps concerning children’s conception of privacy online, their capacity to consent, their functional skills (e.g., in understanding terms and conditions or managing privacy settings online), and their deeper critical understanding of the online environment, including both its interpersonal and, especially, its commercial dimensions (including its business models, uses of data and algorithms, forms of redress, commercial interests, systems of trust and governance). The project takes a child-centred approach, arguing that only in this way can researchers provide the needed integration of children’s understandings, online affordances, resulting experiences...
Bullying, including cyberbullying, affects a high percentage of children at different stages of t... more Bullying, including cyberbullying, affects a high percentage of children at different stages of their development, often severely undermining their health, emotional wellbeing and school performance. Victims may suffer sleep disorders, headaches, stomach pain, poor appetite and fatigue as well as feelings of low-self-esteem, anxiety, depression, shame and at times suicidal thoughts; these are psychological and emotional scars that may persist into adult life. Bullying is a key concern for children. It is one of the most frequent reasons why children call a helpline. It gains centre stage in surveys conducted with school children, and generates a special interest when opinion polls are conducted through social media with young people. The recent U-Report initiative supported by UNICEF with more than 100,000 children and young people around the world illustrates this well: nine in every ten respondents considered that bullying is a major problem; two thirds reported having been victim...
The CO:RE project is a Coordination and Support Action within the Horizon 2020 framework, which a... more The CO:RE project is a Coordination and Support Action within the Horizon 2020 framework, which aims to build an international knowledge base on the impact of technological transformations on children and youth.
Research Papers in Economics, 2016
With children making up an estimated one third of internet users worldwide, living in the ‘digita... more With children making up an estimated one third of internet users worldwide, living in the ‘digital age’ can have important implications for children’s lives. Currently, close to 80 per cent of people in Europe, North America and Australia have internet access, compared with less than 25 per cent in some parts of Africa and South Asia. The international community has recognized the importance of internet access for development, economic growth and the realization of civil rights and is actively seeking ways to ensure universal internet access to all segments of society. Children should be an important part of this process, not only because they represent a substantial percentage of internet users but also because they play an important part in shaping the internet. The internet in turn plays an important part in shaping children’s lives, culture and identities.
Aufwachsen in überwachten Umgebungen, 2021
What should children be taught about their online privacy and the uses that others may make of th... more What should children be taught about their online privacy and the uses that others may make of their personal data, and why? This chapter reports on a systematic mapping of the available evidence followed by child-centered, qualitative research interviews with children aged 11-16 years old in the UK. The aim was to discover what children of different ages already know about privacy and data online, to ask them what they want to know, and then to reflect on the educational challenges posed by the answers. For its conceptual framing, the chapter distinguishes three contexts for data use online-interpersonal, institutional (including the school) and commercial. Since these are increasingly interconnected, it is argued that children should be taught about each, to gain a critical understanding of the data ecology and business models which are driving the datafication of society and, thereby, childhood. Finally, it is proposed that, if schools could themselves demonstrate best practice in data processing-explaining school policy, practice, and opportunities for redress to their studentsthis might prove a more effective means of improving children's understanding than via the taught curriculum.
New Media & Society, 2021
Research and policy have invested in the prospect that gaining digital skills enhances children’s... more Research and policy have invested in the prospect that gaining digital skills enhances children’s and young people’s outcomes. A systematic evidence review of research on digital skills among 12- to 17-year-olds identified 34 studies that used cross-sectional survey methods to examine the association of digital skills with tangible outcomes. Two-thirds concerned the association with online opportunities or other benefits. Another third examined online risks of harm. Findings showed a positive association between digital skills and online opportunities, information benefits, and orientation to technology. Greater digital skills were indirectly linked to greater exposure to online risks, although any link to harm was unclear. While technical skills were linked with mixed or even negative outcomes, information skills were linked with positive outcomes. There was little research on the outcomes of communication or creative digital skills. Future research should examine the dimensions of...
The Handbook of Media Education Research, 2020
Media and Communication, 2020
How do children understand the privacy implications of the contemporary digital environment? This... more How do children understand the privacy implications of the contemporary digital environment? This question is pressing as technologies transform children’s lives into data which is recorded, tracked, aggregated, analysed and monetized. This article takes a child-centred, qualitative approach to charting the nature and limits of children’s understanding of privacy in digital contexts. We conducted focus group interviews with 169 UK children aged 11–16 to explore their understanding of privacy in three distinct digital contexts—interpersonal, institutional and commercial. We find, first, that children primarily conceptualize privacy in relation to interpersonal contexts, conceiving of personal information as something they have agency and control over as regards deciding when and with whom to share it, even if they do not always exercise such control. This leads them to some misapprehensions about how personal data is collected, inferred and used by organizations, be these public inst...
AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 2020
What actors and factors shape children and young people’s digital skills? And how do their digita... more What actors and factors shape children and young people’s digital skills? And how do their digital skills impact the rest of their lives? These are the two research questions addressed in this paper, along with an analysis of how the research literature to date has measured digital skills. The findings reported here come from a systematic evidence review of the antecedents and consequences of digital skills (Haddon, Cino, Doyle, Livingstone, Mascheroni and Stoilova, forthcoming) as part of the ySKILLS project funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme.
AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 2020
In the age of continuous data collection and algorithmic predictions, children’s privacy seems th... more In the age of continuous data collection and algorithmic predictions, children’s privacy seems threatened by the variety of surveillance and data practices in which parents, institutions, corporations and children themselves engage. The vast amount of data routinely collected about children as they grow up include data shared online, whether by children themselves (social media updates, web searches and browsing, data traces of their internet and smartphone use) or their parents (sharenting practices); data shared in the home, like conversations and environmental data captured by internet-connected devices such as smart speakers and internet connected toys; data shared outside the home, including educational and school apps, biometric data in schools and/or airports and stations, health data and medical records, geo-location apps or wearables, etc. Data can be knowingly shared with others, or “given off” as traces of online activities, and even inferred by algorithms that profile, c...
Contemporary Social Science, 2019
Her research covers the areas of online privacy and data protection, children's use of digital te... more Her research covers the areas of online privacy and data protection, children's use of digital technologies, well-being and family support, transformations of intimate life, citizenship and social inequalities.
This case presents the Global Kids Online research model, revealing the challenges of researching... more This case presents the Global Kids Online research model, revealing the challenges of researching children's internet and mobile use in a global context, and providing practical methodological solutions. With most available research conducted in the global North while most growth in the population of young internet users is occurring in the global South, researchers are faced with the challenge of creating research tools that are both context-sensitive, yet able to capture children's experiences of the internet on a global scale, and that allow for robust crosscountry comparative approaches. The Global Kids Online methodology is designed for children aged 9-17 who use the internet at least minimally and for adult respondents (the children's parents or carers). It includes a survey of parents and children, and individual and group interviews with children. The Global Kids Online project was developed as a collaborative initiative between the London School of Economics and Political Science, the UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti, and the EU Kids Online network to address this need for a robust global evidence base on children's online opportunities and risks, and their effects on children's well-being and rights, which can be used to inform national and international policy, regulation, and practice. Learning Outcomes By the end of this case, students should be able to: • Understand key issues related to the design, fieldwork, data analysis and management of a global research project on children and the internet • Assess the advantages of using mixed methods • Understand the key challenges and advantages of cross-national comparative research. Acknowledgements This case is based on our work with colleagues as part of the projects Global Kids Online (GKO) and Maximizing Children's Online Opportunities and Minimizing Risks (MOMRO), and draws on research published in our online research toolkit (see www.globalkidsonline.net/tools). This work was made possible by financial support from the WePROTECT Global Alliance, UNICEF, and the London School of Economics and Political Science. We would like to thank our colleagues from the Global Kids Online network and the project expert advisors for their help and guidance. Case Study Research Context, Aims and Research Questions Everyday life is increasingly infused with digital technology use to the point where the distinction between offline and online is becoming blurred (Livingstone & Bulger, 2014; Third, Bellerose, Dawkins, Keltie, & Pihl, 2014). Theoretical and methodological approaches recognizing the digital as fundamentally interwoven with the social (Couldry & Hepp, 2017; Lupton, 2015; Wajcman, 2015) are coming to the fore of contemporary social and media research. Children, too, are becoming internet users at rapidly increasing rates and at younger ages (Holloway, Green, & Livingstone, 2013), with around one in three internet users globally estimated to be under 18 (Livingstone, Carr, & Byrne, 2016). The digital environment has become an important resource facilitating children's access to information, education, and health resources, as well as offering important opportunities for communication, socializing, creativity,
Development in Practice, 2018
In development agendas regarding children in low-income communities, both older and emerging medi... more In development agendas regarding children in low-income communities, both older and emerging media are typically ignored or assumed to have beneficial powers that will redress social and gender inequality. This article builds on a recent rapid evidence review on adolescents' digital media use and development interventions in low-and middleincome countries to examine the contexts of children and adolescents' access to, and uses of, information and communication technology(ICT). Noting that only a handful of studies heed the significance of social class and gender as major axes of inequality for adolescents, the article scrutinises the gap between the rhetoric of ICT-based empowerment and the realities of ICT-based practice. It calls for a radical rethinking of childhood and development in light of the actual experiences, struggles, and contexts.
Global Studies of Childhood, 2016
Drawing on an ongoing international research project, Global Kids Online, this article examines t... more Drawing on an ongoing international research project, Global Kids Online, this article examines the theoretical and methodological challenges of conducting global research on children’s rights in the digital age at a time of intense socio-technological change and contested policy development. Arguing in favour of critically rethinking existing research frameworks and measures for new circumstances, we report on the experience of designing a research toolkit and piloting this in four countries on four continents. We aim to generate national and cross-national insights that can benefit future researchers and research users concerned to build a robust evidence base to understand children’s rights in the digital age. It is hoped that such experiences will prompt wider lessons for the unfolding research and policy agenda.