Ellen Helsper

While it is now widely accepted that inequality is the defining issue of our time and there is growing research on the drivers and impacts of inequalities, there has been less focus on how inequalities are experienced and resisted by ordinary people and communities. The newly launched Politics of Inequality research theme at the International Inequalities Institute explores the practices of resistance, mobilisation, and contestation from a bottom-up perspective.

Although there has been research on parental anxieties about online risks, research has not examined whether risk perceptions influence parents’ mediation of their children’s Internet use. In this article, we draw on the well-established literature on the social psychology of risk, according to which people adjust their risk management behaviors based on their perceptions of the likelihood of risk and the severity of harm.