Social media and the societal landscape are in rapid evolution, and there is much confusion ranging from uncritical advocacy and promotion of disruptive digital and social media technologies to the fears and moral panic around the use of SNS in general and children's or practitioners’ use of SNSs in particular. However, such divergent reactions to the novelty and transformative power of technology are neither new nor supported by evidence. Indeed, often the moral panic and fears about technology and change are the projection of individual and collective anxieties and lack of familiarity with digital and social media technologies. A lack of critical perspective can lead to misinformed and unhelpful claims such as ‘social media should not or cannot be taught’, or that it is ‘common sense’, and other similar views. This simplistic thinking and these reductionist ideas are at best misinformed and unhelpful, and fail to appreciate the intricacies and significant differences between the online and offline environments, and the liminal (that is simultaneously online and offline) nature of human subjectivity and lived experience.

As changes in technology create new opportunities, they also generate new risks and ethical challenges. Indeed, technology has an impact on and transforms every aspect and notion in people's lives including the very meaning of childhood, parenting, friendships, relationships, education, work, play, leisure, privacy, identity, equality and the very notion of humanness. In previous chapters we used the 10 C's psycho-socio-ecological model as a model for holistic assessment and safeguarding, and applied this model in analysing and unpacking various practice case examples and their different dimensions and challenges. In this concluding chapter we briefly highlight examples of some of the salient trends in technology, and some of their applications and implications for safeguarding children and young people.

Evolution of the web

The evolution of the web is one of the most important trends impacting human life and experience. However, most conversations about social media and the web tend to refer to Web 2.0 when Web 3.0 is already here, and the development of Web 4.0 is well under way. Changes in web technologies have significant and farreaching implications for services and safeguarding; Table 11.1 presents some of the differences between Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. However, the evolution of the web already extends beyond Web 3.0, so let us briefly consider the evolution of the web, from Web 1.0 to 5.0.