Children's Rights to ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Screen Time : Parental Narratives of How Children Do Family Online

• For many families, ICTs have become an indispensable part of family life. Smartphones and other digital communication technologies help them to keep up with each other during school/work hours; organizing family gatherings can be coordinated in chat-groups created specifically for that purpose; and keeping up with grandparents overseas has become much more vivid thanks to video-telephony. However, integrating ICTs into families’ everyday lives means new (micro) tasks, new opportunities, but also new troubles.Drawing on interview data with six extended Swedish families spread over 18 households, we investigate how (grand-)parents manage, relate to, and assist in children’s digital family work. In our qualitative analysis, we show how particular roles and tasks are assigned to and expected of the children. We find that the children are often put into a paradoxical position. On the one hand, they are understood as digital natives “by default”, who embrace digital technologies and for whom communicating online is automatically fun and easy. On the other hand, they are placed as victims of omnipresent digitalisation, who need to be protected in favor of a more ‘natural childhood’. In accordance to these opposing positions, we analyze how technologies are called ‘good’ in the framework of family communication, and ‘bad’ in other contexts, such as entertainment.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Mänsklig interaktion med IKT (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Human Aspects of ICT (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Digital Childhood

Digital Natives

Family Intimacy

ICTs

Networked Individualism

Disconnection

Non-Use Studies

Screen Time

Sociologi

Sociology

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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