Filmmaker and campaigner Baroness Beeban Kidron in conversation with writer, broadcaster and comedian Sandi Toksvig about technology.

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” – Nelson Mandela

Childhood has been transformed in little more than a decade. Social media, smartphones and AI are reshaping how children learn, play, relate to one another and understand themselves. The online world we have today wasn’t inevitable. It was designed.

Join filmmaker, campaigner and digital rights pioneer Baroness Beeban Kidron and writer, broadcaster and comedian Sandi Toksvig for an urgent conversation about childhood, technology and democracy.

Drawing on her powerful new book, USERS: How Big Tech Took Control and How to Fight Back, Beeban argues that today’s digital world was not built with children in mind. It was built to capture attention, maximise engagement and generate profit. But if the internet we have today is the result of choices, different choices can build something better.

Together, Beeban and Sandi will explore how technology came to reshape childhood, why the internet has been allowed to play by different rules, and what it would take to build a digital world where children can truly flourish.

Join us at Conway Hall for an urgent conversation about the future of childhood in the digital age.

5x15. Where great stories are told live.

Praise for USERS:

'A thrilling story of how democracies can respond to the world’s most powerful industry, told by the woman who is leading the charge.' Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation

'Beeban has spent her life watching what Big Tech does to childhood. We fight the same battle. USERS is her reckoning and her roadmap: we must demand better – but only if we have the courage. Read it. Then join our fight!' Maria Ressa, journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

‘This book will help us understand how high the stakes are and how we can fight back.’ Sir Elton John and David Furnish

Baroness Beeban Kidron is a global authority on digital regulation and accountability, and is a leading voice on children’s rights in the digital environment. She has played a determinative role in establishing standards for online safety and privacy across the world. Baroness Kidron sits as a crossbench peer in the UK’s House of Lords, and is founder and former Chair of the 5Rights Foundation. She serves on the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy and is a former member of the UN Broadband Commission. She is a Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics, where she chairs the Digital Futures for Children research centre, and is an advisor to the University of Oxford Institute for Ethics in AI.

Sandi Toksvig was born in Denmark, brought up in Africa, then America and moved to the UK when she was fourteen. She has been on British stage, screen and radio for over forty years and was awarded an OBE for Services to Broadcasting. She is the mother of three children, married and lives deep in the woods.

Description supplied by the event organiser.