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Sonia Livingstone DPhil (Oxon), OBE, FBA, FBPS, FAcSS, FRSA, is a professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. Sonia is Director of Digital Futures for Children, a joint LSE and 5Rights Foundation research centre on children’s rights in the digital environment. Current and recent funded projects include Medical Research Council and Huo Family Foundation research on youth mental health in digital contexts, Economic and Social Research Council research on family engagement with digital platforms, MacArthur Foundation research on digital parenting, and European Commission research on youth digital skills, on children’s online lives, and on age assurance. Much of Sonia’s time these days is concerned with Children’s Rights in the Digital Age, and she supported the drafting of General Comment 25 on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment for the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. She is currently a member of the UN Independent International Scientific Panel on AI.

Taking a comparative, critical and contextualised approach, Sonia’s research examines how the changing conditions of mediation are reshaping everyday practices and possibilities for action. She has published 23 books on media audiences, especially children and young people’s risks and opportunities, media literacy and rights in the digital environment, including Digital Media Use in Early Childhood: Birth to Six (Bloomsbury, 2024), and her most recent book Is the Internet Good for Children (Polity, forthcoming). Sonia is committed to bringing evidence into policy and practice, and she has advised the UK government, European Commission, European Parliament, Council of Europe, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, OECD, Ofcom, UNESCO, ITU and UNICEF, among others, on children’s online safety and rights in the digital environment. She was President of the International Communication Association, and has been awarded six honorary doctorates and several international prizes for her research contributions.