Julian Sefton-Green

For some decades, scholars have documented the expansion of discourses of ‘intensive’ parenting in Anglo-American culture and the increasing mediation of family life. In this context, this article argues that online culture is increasingly responsible for an ever-present instructional address, in which parents are continually targeted with advice from many voices, automated, known and unknown, all claiming various kinds of expertise about how to parent ‘well’ for a child’s development. We offer a framework for understanding how online parenting cultures contribute to intensive parenting through the paradigm of what we term ‘sciency’ advice: that is, advice that relies on the aesthetic and affective authority of science and scientific credentials. Examining three intertwined circuits of sciency advice through which parents are addressed: in the algorithmic pushes of social media content, in mediated zones of sociality such as group chats, and in parenting platforms and apps, we suggest these discourses are activated both in the purportedly helpful ‘push’ of social media and the anxious ‘pull’ of information-seeking practices of parents. As such, ‘sciency’ advice is bounded neither spatially nor temporally to particular sites or schedules; it is continuous and environmental. In proposing this framework of analysis, we suggest that these ‘360-degree’ online parenting cultures redefine the ‘parent’ as a subject and object of advice, heightening the stakes of everyday childrearing.

Australia implemented the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 (Cth; SMMA) on December 10, 2025. This policy represents a world-first social media age-restriction, which requires age-restricted social media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under the age of 16 from creating or keeping an account. Preliminary estimates suggest that approximately 1,194,000 young people will be affected by the deactivation of accounts. As the SMMA is enacted, we are collecting data to examine the outcomes for young people, parents, and families. This study protocol paper serves as a summary of the methodological design for the evaluation of the implementation and outcomes of the SMMA, including a) young people’s adherence, and the SMMA’s impact on b) their digital practices, c) their physical, psychological, and social wellbeing, d) their families, and e) community attitudes and dynamics. To evaluate the impact of the SMMA implementation, a mixed-methods approach is being undertaken involving 4,121 young people aged 10 to 16 years and their parents or caregivers. Data collection involves longitudinal parent-child surveys, opt-in passive smartphone tracking, administrative data, qualitative interviews, focus groups and diary studies. Findings from this evaluation will inform national policy oversight and implementation in Australia; contribute empirical evidence to international debates; and inform other countries considering similar age-based regulation of social media. Results will be disseminated through public-facing reports, peer-reviewed publications, and stakeholder engagement activities to support evidence-informed decision-making in digital safety regulation in Australia and internationally.

This article examines current Australian research about digital media use by families with young children. Informed by a scoping review of 55 publications (2017–2022), we use select findings as departure points to consider how Australian media and communications research can meaningfully contribute to both local and international knowledge. We find that current Australian research largely mirrors international trends, particularly in its lack of attention to differing experiences of digital childhood and its emphasis on instrumental dimensions of parenting. However, we argue that features of the Australian context mean that researchers here have an opportunity to contribute much needed insights across several key areas. First, there is an opportunity to examine how Indigenous and migrant families navigate digital media, building on existing Australian traditions that highlight these communities’ media practices. Second, there is an opportunity to examine how digital exclusion shapes early childhood experiences, particularly given Australia's persistent challenges with digital inequality. Third, there is an opportunity to critically examine how Anglo-Celtic Australian parenting cultures inform normative understandings of children's digital media use. These directions would not only provide a fuller picture of Australian digital childhoods but would also address areas of significant need in international research. We argue that these directions would enable richer and more deeply contextualised understandings of the breadth of Australian digital childhood experiences, enabling better public debate about children's everyday digital media use.

This brief introductory chapter establishes the context for the argument of this book. In a context of increasing platformization and simultaneously reshaping of the contemporary family, how do platforms and families see, understand, and interact with each other as changing kinds of processes and social institutions? The chapter outlines the contents of the rest of the book.

This chapter sets the context for the whole book by describing the broad context of digital transformations focusing on digital platforms across many domains in contemporary life. Platforms are now a key type of societal infrastructure governing many social, institutional and interpersonal interactions. The chapter then introduces literature describing how platforms are increasingly understood in relationship to families. This is both in terms of the family as a social unit and how the family conducts its interior and exterior lives through or ‘on’ platforms. The chapter describes the theories and concepts that have been used to explain how families use platforms to ‘compose’ themselves and how families are addressed and identified as a social unit through and by digital platforms. Contemporary ideas of the family itself are of course in a change of flux and the chapter goes onto describe how the sociology of the family is reconceptualising what the family might mean in the context of radical social restructuring and individualisation. The chapter ends by trying to conceptualise the relationship between families and platforms and how this relationship may be better understood by researching the activities of platformization.

The final chapter of the book brings together key ideas, theories, and questions raised across the book to propose an agenda for progressing research on the platformization of the family. It summarises the key dimensions of platforms and families and proposes a theory of extended-domestication that bridges the micro and macro elements of these dimensions.

Online, informal learning communities bring youth opportunities for learning that schools cannot offer. Yet, there are concerns about the impact of social media platforms’ control over online learning. We argue for a re-evaluation of what an ‘online informal learning community’ is by looking at such active communities on three platforms: YouTube, Twitch and TikTok. We do this by reconsidering Gee’s ‘affinity spaces’ and by asking: how can we understand online informal learning communities in the current sociotechnical context? We observed and analysed interactions of six learning communities on YouTube, Twitch and TikTok. Our results show that in today’s platformised online context, Gee’s concept of ‘affinity spaces’ should be reconsidered in three ways. First, platforms call for discussion about affinity spaces’ boundaries through the visibility regimes that play a part in access. Second, platforms challenge the affinity spaces’ grammar; to maintain a focus on their interest, platforms need to engage with interests provided by platform cultures. Third, a more fixated hierarchisation, informed by platforms’ focus on creators, impacts affinity spaces’ social structures. We introduce the concept of ‘platformised affinity space’ as a first step to specific dynamics that platforms introduce to online informal learning communities. We conclude that we only understand these communities when acknowledging how these dynamics are appropriated as well as resisted to achieve community goals.