Preliminary research findings from our eSafety Commission project that is looking at emerging safety issues for young people and social media.

1. Presented by:
Justine Humphry
Jonathon Hutchinson
Co-designing online safety
with young people in a post-
crisis world
Research Connections

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Research team
University of Sydney
Dr Justine Humphry
Dr Jonathon Hutchinson
Dr Olga Boichak
Assisted by Dr Mahli-Ann Butt & Ms Mabel Truong
Partners: Student Edge & Youth Action
Funded by eSafety Commissioner

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Advisory group
6 prominent experts representing community
organisations and academia
● Professor Bronwyn Carlson (Macquarie University),
● Professor Tama Leaver (Curtin University),
● Professor Michael Dezuanni (Queensland University of Technology)
● Professor Jakelin Troy (Sydney Indigenous Research Network)
● Dr Catherine Jeffery (University of Sydney)
● Ms Kate Munro (Youth Action)

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Is it an online safety crisis?

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What is the project about?
How do young people between the ages of 12 and 17 and their parents/carers understand and negotiate young people’s
online experiences to stay safe?
The aim: to promote digital literacy and safe online experience by producing evidence-based education resources working with
young people and parents, using a participatory research and co-design approach.
Target audience: young people aged 12-17 and parents of young people aged 12-17 in NSW with a focus on inclusion of
Indigenous and CALD communities.
The main objectives:
· To understand the current and emerging issues for young people using social media in Australia, and the surrounding
regulatory frameworks in which they operate.
· To find out about young people’s understandings and patterns of use in relation to the emerging issues of age-gating,
data surveillance and digital disconnection and how these are negotiated by young social media users and their
parents or carers.
· To co-create and evaluate educational resources with young people and carers that would be informed by the
research.

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Significance and contribution
● Personal experiences that motivated research - we are parents of children around the same age trying to handle similar
challenges and experiences
● Online safety is a highly topical area of research and policy making and a fast changing platform and regulatory
environment - emerging issues of age verification, data profiling and changing online privacy laws.
● Parents often expected to be the experts in managing the online safety of their children, yet struggle with this formidable
task (Livingstone, 2019).
● There is little direct engagement with young people on safety measures and approaches, and this is a feature of the policy
responses around the world.
● During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has also been a rapid shift to using online tools and spaces for home-based
learning and socialising with Australian young people spending time and interacting online more than ever before
(Graham & Sahlberg 2021).
● Some important changes in the Australian legal context e.g. draft Online Privacy Bill and in social media e.g. BeReal
influenced our early approach and research design.
● Adopted a responsive and collaborative approach to this rapidly changing context in which our research was taking place,
pro-actively engaging in policy and presenting findings as we go, and involving young people as co-researchers in the
research, and in responses to online safety.

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Methodology
‘Co-design is applied research that seeks to understand people's engagements with objects, systems and
services, better engage publics and other stakeholders, work towards social change and identify and intervene
in futures.’ (Lupton 2017).
Co-design is aligned with our philosophy that online safety is not a static and objective state of things but rather,
constantly evolving, contextual and relational, and that online safety is a shared responsibility between multiple groups,
technologies and institutions, rather than something that is managed by individuals.
We adopted co-design and participatory research as our methodology to support an iterative, responsive and
collaborative approach in order to:
● Work with the groups that would ultimately be engaging with the educational resources created.
● Include their understandings, practices and insights to make these effective and meaningful.
● Build capacity (e.g. skills and literacies) and spaces of participation for those groups throughout the project that
might otherwise be excluded from the solutions and policies being designed and implemented for them.

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What have we done so far?
● Phase 1 Qualitative - Focus groups and survey co-design workshop
Seven 90 minute online focus groups conducted on Zoom, each with 6-7 participants:
● Group 1: 12-14s
● Group 2: 15-17s
● Group 3: 12-14s
● Group 4: 15-17s
● Group 5: Parents of 12-14s
● Group 6: Parents of 15-17s
● Group 7: 12-14s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
Two survey co-design workshops conducted on Zoom, one with young people aged 12-17 and one with
parents/carers of children aged 12-17.
● Phase 2 Quantitative - National survey (October - current) of a stratified representative sample of 600 young
people and 600 parents/carers (15 min duration, n=1200) across Australia.
Research Ethics - all stages of the project have involved ethics application modifications to be approved by the Human
Research Ethics Committee at the University.

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12. What we have found - Codebook

13. What we have found - Broad Patterns

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What we have found - Rich Data Dive
Online Privacy Bill - Parents initially interested,
but this changed when detail was explained;
young people don’t hold much hope:
“My response, to be honest, it wouldn’t affect
me, but if I was younger my response would be
simply just to get a VPN and change my country
if it was going to create this obstacle.”
Pressures - Family, peer and community
pressure to join social media:
[joining Instagram] was mostly because my
friends told me to. It was less peer pressure and
more like, “There’s this really cool thing I want to
show you. You have to get Instagram to see it.”
And it’s like, “I want to be included. I want to see
what people are looking at. I want to see what
people are talking about.” And there’s also like
people will plan things on Instagram and people
will have group chats.

15. Safety Behaviours - Most young people are
employing safe measures and use social media
well; Parents and carers are worried about the
less important items:
“Because a lot of the time it’s hard to talk to
people that you know in real life. So, talking to
people online can be easier but then again,
could be unsafe. So, you have to take the
chance of weighing the pros and cons.”
“Whenever I sign up to a suspicious website or
something I just use an online temporary email
also. I then make – use a random password. So
I test it out first if it’s safe or not.”
Consent and Data Privacy - the most worrying
area for young people:
“It is needed but I feel like it’s hard to provide but
also because terms and conditions force you to
give consent because even if you read all the
terms and conditions, all the fine prints, and if
you don’t agree with something, it’s highly
unlikely that a major company is going to
change the terms and conditions just for one
person. So, lots of people just don’t even bother
and accept it either way. So being forced to
consent even though you may not want to.”
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What we have found - Rich Data Dive

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Where to next?
Continue Social Media Accounts
Co-Creation Workshop
Create Resources

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https://youthonlinesafety.org/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/youth-online-safety/
https://www.instagram.com/youthonlinesafety/
https://www.tiktok.com/@youthonlinesafety

18. Presented by:
Justine Humphry
Jonathon Hutchinson
Co-designing online safety
with young people in a post-
crisis world
Research Connections