DrKatrin Langton

I am particularly interested in the 'appification' of family life - and its implications for digital parenting, digital childhoods, and how families function and relate to each other. My PhD project explored how mobile applications designed to support parents in feeding and caring for their infants shape how contemporary parenthood is understood and practised, focussing on issues of digital inclusion, parental role-divisions in (digital) caregiving labour, and data privacy. Recent work has built on this expertise through an investigation into the key issues of baby apps more broadly (including fertility-, pregnancy- and baby-tracking apps), including an overview of the field of 'baby app studies'.

Exploring data safety at a more technical level, I am currently leading a project that traces the inbound and outbound data flows of baby apps, with the intention to 'track the trackers' collecting children's digital traces. The project combines static analysis of app code, with dynamic analysis of the actual network connections being made, and what kind of data is being sent where. 

I am also leading a study building on the survey data from the Digital Child's longitudinal study - Australian Children of the digital age (ACODA) - to gain deeper insights into how families with young children aged 0-8 manage data and data privacy in the context of the home, and in everyday family life - including both parents and children's perspectives.

Additionally, I have worked on projects that explore how the concept of 'screen time' is constructed by parents on TikTok; a study on parents' perceptions of 'quality' in young children's digital engagements, and a project that explores what information on children's screen use would be most useful to Australian parents of young children.