Jun Zhao (LSE) - 2025-26 Students
j.zhao64@lse.ac.uk

Growing up under Watchful Eyes: Digital Care and Adult– Child Relations in Chinese Families

This project explores how digital technologies are reshaping care between adults and children in contemporary Chinese families. It focuses on cameras, children’s smartwatches, school platforms and messaging apps that allow adults to check on, guide and coordinate care for children across time and distance. The study uses the Chinese concept of guan — which combines care, guidance, supervision control and more — to examine when digital monitoring is understood as care, when it becomes intrusive, and how children negotiate being seen or recorded, and how these negotiations reflect wider social and political frameworks.

Principal supervisor: Prof. Lee Edwards