Evolving Online Safety from Childhood to Adulthood with Amanda Lenhart

Larry hosts Amanda Lenhart to discuss her newest study for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, where kids and parents used playful activities to surface challenges and brainstorm solutions for managing technology at home.

Lenhart explains a key takeaway: digital parenting is cyclical—families repeatedly research, adopt, “unbox,” and then continually manage devices as children mature and new tools arrive—creating exhaustion but also building experience parents can reuse. They compare tech safety to car safety (airbags, seat belts, car seats), arguing for stronger safety-by-design defaults alongside optional fine-grained controls.

They discuss shifting risks, moral panics, rapid tech change, platform incentives, social media age bans, and the importance of respectful, ongoing conversations focused on maturity signals, balance, and scaffolding kids toward independent digital adulthood.

00:00 Welcome to Doing Tech

00:29 Meet Amanda Lenhart

01:05 Inside the Cooney Study

01:40 Playful Co Design Methods

03:18 Why Younger Kids Matter

06:27 Joan Ganz Cooney Center

07:25 Parenting Tech Cycle

11:29 Exhausted Parents Burden

14:01 Safety by Design Defaults