Exploring Digital Problems with Young Children: A Social Labs Approach

‘Social labs’ is a participatory method designed to address complex social challenges through collaborative, experimental, and systemic approaches (Shanley Gianni & Meacham, 2021). First introduced as a participatory approach by Zaid Hassan (2014) to bring different stakeholders together including civil society, governments and businesses to come up with solutions or prototypes to address systematic social problems, this method focuses on collective intelligence, innovation and experimentation to promote desired social change.In this research, we invited 7 children between ages 6 and 9 to join UOW researchers and Gregory Metcalfe (International Expert) in a two-day intensive workshop where we explored issues children faced in the digital environment through play, discussions, storytelling and role play. Taking a child’s rights approach (UNCRC, 1989; 2021) where we recognise children’s right to be heard and participate in the digital environment safely and with agency, this study adapted the Social Labs model to simulate the inclusion of children’s voices in defining digital problems for children and coming up with solutions for different stakeholders.