Living the future

A spotlight on the future of technology
There are many different family types and homes in the UK. Families live in a diversity of spaces and ways, from extended families with grandparents providing childcare to single parents with no family support. From fragmented families with children having multiple homes and relationships, to the traditional family of two parents, two kids and a bedroom each, and families living in cramped homes (or rooms) struggling with their finances. There is no singular notion of ‘The Family’ and we acknowledge up front that our findings and conclusions may not be relevant for every family or home. Even so, technology advances – most notably superfast connectivity – will have an impact on almost all families.

Though key workers including medics, shop workers, teachers and delivery drivers went to work during the COVID-19 lockdown, their social and family life, just as for everyone else, was locked to the home. As families stampeded onto the internet, suddenly, the industry and research hype and benefits of the connected home and family were clear. Technology provided our only portal to spaces and faces beyond our household. COVID-19 further highlighted the broad spectrum of family types and homes, but also, as was so evident during lockdown, very different kinds of access to technology and connectivity. COVID-19 has changed the use and perception of technology for the family and the home so significantly, it required a reconsideration of earlier findings in response to this paradigmatic shift.

Work began on this report into future technology and family life in late 2019, around the same time COVID-19 emerged. The home as the place families would stay in and do most everything from was no longer a prediction, it was to become an enforced reality for many.

Children, young people, technology thinkers, child safety experts and academics have all contributed, and together they suggest a family life where the home is even more central to our lives, as technology complements our desire to be ever more efficient, entertained and more widely connected. The report is richer for their contribution and we are indebted to them. Understanding how young people both use and think about technology has been critical in thinking through the issues raised in the report. Society needs our best thinkers working out how to enjoy the benefits of connected technology safely. The tech coming into our homes is designed precisely to be convenient, to entertain and perhaps to educate. With the deployment of home tech at scale comes a raft of safety and privacy concerns.

This report airs those issues – and acknowledges the reality that for many families, convenience trumps
online safety. That means its even more important that we all take seriously our shared responsibility to minimise the risks so that children can thrive online. That conversation has never been more necessary.

The report team

Professor Lynne Hall, Huawei, University of Sunderland and Internet Matters.

We took a wide approach to gather information:

• Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA): review of research, technical and grey (policy and stakeholder) literature on technologies in the home and family focusing on Smart Home, Voice Assistants, Virtual Reality and Interactive Toys. From the evidence we identified and developed a series of themes and gaps for further exploration.

Before COVID-19

• Expert Interviews: interviews involving 15 experts from universities, technology corporates
  and stakeholder organisations to explore their perspectives on near-future technology in the home.
• Delphi Study: based on the REA and the expert interviews, questions were created for a 2-round Delphi study, involving 21 experts from universities, technology corporates, stakeholder organisations and also schools.
• Workshops and Questionnaires with Teenagers: using qualitative, quantitative and speculative design-based approaches to consider the future with 136 teenagers, giving their views and perspectives on technology and completing questionnaires.
• Parent Questionnaire: through an online survey, parents were asked about their views of future home technologies, to which 402 parents responded from across the UK with all age ranges represented for both children and parents.

During COVID-19

• Longitudinal Interviews: 13 families participated in 3 phone interviews – at the beginning of lockdown (late March/early April), mid-lockdown (early May) and as lockdown was beginning to ease (early July) with parents talking about their family’s experiences of living, learning, working and socialising in the home.
• Parent Questionnaire: in late May/early June a further online survey was carried out with parents about their lockdown experience and use of technology in the home to support work, learning and social life. We received responses from 232 parents across the UK who were also asked for their views on future home technologies.

Methodology

• Homes will be voice-enabled with a blurring of the Voice Assistant and the house itself, achieved through a significant rise in smart devices. The Voice Assistant will be a home control, personal organiser, entertainer and source of information. Everyone will have one and it will connect families and homes.
• Concerns around data mean that families don’t necessarily trust the technology that connects them – it’s not a friend. However, as they get used to the benefits this domestic technology brings, their initial concerns about data deployment and privacy seem to fade. All players in this field – families themselves, tech companies, privacy and safety campaigners and regulators have a role to play to determine whether this passive acceptance and ensuing data sharing is desirable. At the very least, users should have more information on what data is used and how, so that they are better able to give informed consent.
• vCommerce or shopping through a Voice Assistant is on the rise and will be another typical way to shop for many families. Living with COVID-19, families do less convenience purchasing, requiring a complete shopping list for delivery. Voice will make this easy to compile, order and track.
  4. There will be more screens, media channels and content in homes than ever before, but families may be forced into funnels by algorithms that provide children, teenagers and adults with the same content recommendations. This is another cause for concern with the retreat into the home potentially accompanied by the establishment of a personalised echo chamber.
• It was already predictable that families would be more at home, physically meeting less but more connected with friends and family beyond the home. Coronavirus has reinforced this and from now until at least 2025, homes will be more central to family lives than for generations. External communications will be virtual and internally the Voice Assistant as messenger and mediator will provide a way of communicating within the home.
• Families and children living with no or limited connectivity and without devices appropriate for learning and socialising are excluded not only from everyday activities but from aspirational futures. The solution to this social challenge is to connect homes and provide children with devices. Such inclusion to the connected world could have more impact on children’s potential to ‘level up’ than almost any other intervention strategy or policy, particularly in a new normal where without connectivity lives are less rich, engaging or enjoyable.
• Virtual Reality is for the next generation and will be taken far beyond gaming with 5G and gigabyte broadband providing the breakthrough of connectivity, bandwidth and speed needed to support interaction in these new spaces. Unlike in industry, it will not be realism that wins the race, instead Virtual Reality will be more about what can be done with it to support socialising, streaming and new ways to play.
• Stories of security flaws found by consumer organisations have driven caution around interactive toys, but recent innovations such as Voice Assistant-enabled toys are likely to have great success. COVID-19 has highlighted that toy tech for remote collaborative play is not available and again this use case is one with considerable opportunity for toy manufacturers and tech corporates.
• There are considerable implications for design and security as tech learns ever more about the families who use connected products and opens up new routes for young people to socialise and access content. Ensuring that legislation and compliance are in step will be critical to minimise risk for families, to shine a light on how data is collected and used and the implications for homes as truly private spaces.
• The growth in children’s screen time and use of connected technology, escalated during the coronavirus pandemic, illustrates the ongoing need to continue the dialogue on digital literacy. As technology enhances the ability of children and young people to access multiple virtual worlds and meet in virtual spaces, to live the future families must be educated on maximising benefits as well as reducing risks in their connected home.