Digital Families 2022, Parent Zone’s first in-person conference for three years, comes at a crucial time. As the world faces multiple upheavals, experiences for families online are changing rapidly.

The UK faces a cost-of-living crisis. The winter ahead is expected to be difficult for many families, in ways that are only likely to deepen divisions online and worsen digital poverty.

The recent turmoil in the Conservative Party has stopped the Online Safety Bill in its tracks, the first casualty of a change of leadership. The Bill is now stalled in its passage through parliament and no one knows whether it will be passed or changed out of all recognition. 

We do know that the government is keen to focus on media literacy. Yet our research suggests that many teachers don’t understand it. Teachers do, though, share the view that it’s important: the overwhelming majority want it included in the national curriculum.

Meanwhile, the web is changing, with the metaverse potentially around the corner bringing new risks and harms. 

Gaming already offers children and young people worlds in which they are financially as well as socially immersed. Policymakers are lagging behind, oblivious to what’s coming.

We’ll kick off the day with Faith Rogow, the global media literacy expert, who will explain why media literacy matters. Is the UK thinking broadly enough about this crucial area for the future? 

Tech companies will – hopefully – sooner or later have a duty of care to users. But individuals will always have to be capable of sifting the good from the bad, the reliable from the dubious, the useful from the rubbish. 

Faith will talk about why media literacy education has to start early and can never really be complete.

The metaverse is widely expected to emerge from massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) like Fortnite and Roblox. Already, these games are changing the way children and young people relate to one another online, introducing financial transactions at every turn.

Parent Zone is at the forefront of identifying the new risks, and we’ll be joined by some of the leading figures in the field, including Dr David Zendle and Jonathan Baggaley, to talk about why financial harms need to be taken more seriously.

With a rising cost of living, more and more families are struggling to make ends meet. Digital technology, so vital to future prosperity and innovation, is expensive for families. Too many children are already excluded from opportunities online.

Sam Sharps of the Tony Blair Institute will remind us why growing up with tech is essential to future prosperity. We’ll discuss how as a society we can make sure that all children learn how to be creative, collaborative and enterprising online.

Underlying all of this will be the uncertain future of the Online Safety Bill. The new Prime Minister has hinted she wants changes. Yet the Bill has cross-party support and has been eased into parliament over a very long period of time, with a great deal of care to bring most critics along. 

Parent Zone has always cast a critical eye over the Bill, asking what it could do better. But self-regulation clearly hasn’t worked. We’ll be asking what happens now.

Check out our speakers here.

In-person tickets have sold out but you can register to join us virtually. Join us for what promises to be a fascinating day.