Professor Sonia Livingstone is one of the world’s leading experts on how technology is changing our lives. A technology social psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science, she has spent decades researching social media, digital wellbeing and online safety, while advising governments and international organisations around the world.
Technology was supposed to make our lives easier. But has it also made us less in control?
In this episode, Professor Livingstone explains why the biggest technology companies are fighting for our attention, how social media can learn and exploit our vulnerabilities, why screen time alone is the wrong way to think about digital wellbeing, and how artificial intelligence could take the attention economy to an entirely new level.
She also explains why children are struggling to put their phones down, what parents are getting wrong about screen time, how our own phone habits influence our children, and why simply taking technology away may create more problems than it solves.
You will learn:
• Why agency may be one of the most important factors in our mental wellbeing
• How social media platforms are designed to keep us scrolling
• Why five hours on a screen does not always have the same effect
• How personalised algorithms can push vulnerable people towards increasingly extreme content
• Why children may feel they have nowhere else to go when we take their phones away
• The biggest mistakes parents make when managing technology at home
• Why children are constantly watching how their parents use their phones
• How to create a healthier relationship with technology without removing it completely
• Why AI companions could become particularly dangerous for lonely and vulnerable people
• How to use AI without allowing it to replace human judgement and real relationships
• Why governments are struggling to regulate technology quickly enough
• The simple changes we can make today to take back control of our attention
Professor Livingstone’s message is ultimately simple: technology should be a tool that helps us live the life we choose.
It should not choose that life for us.
Buy Prof Livingstone books:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B001HP4N1E/
Follow Prof Livingstone:
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/sonia-livingstone-6b0b8712
https://www.lse.ac.uk/people/sonia-livingstone
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