Childhood, Mobile Technologies and Everyday Experiences

Changing Technologies = Changing Childhoods?

E. Bond

• Editore: Palgrave Macmillan
• Anno: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137292537
• Argomento: Scienze sociali
• Categoria: Sociologia del matrimonio e della famiglia

This timely volume offers an in-depth theoretical analysis of children's experiences growing up with mobile internet technologies. Drawing on up-to-date research, it explores the relationship between childhood as a social and cultural construction and the plethora of mobile internet technologies which have become ubiquitous in everyday life.

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Introduction

This book is essentially about childhood. In fact, it is about childhood and the relationship between mobile technologies and childhood, highlighting children’s everyday experiences in growing up with mobile internet technologies. It is an attempt to explore the changing nature of late-modern childhood and the relationship between childhood, as a social and cultural construction, and the plethora of mobile internet technologies which have become ubiquitous in everyday life, and certainly in most children’s everyday lives. According to recent research by Mascheroni and Ólafsson (2013), smartphones are devices that most children are likely to own (53 per cent) or use at least once a day to go online. By mobile internet technologies, I include here, of course, not only mobile phones and smartphones but also post-PC tablets, netbooks and e-readers. As the authors (2013, p. 5) point out, however, ‘there is much current discussion of mobile media, there is scope for different definitions at this point in time as well as changing definitions over time if, like the internet itself, mobile media are a moving target as new technologies and applications are continuously developed’. My analysis here examines what Rich Ling (2012) calls the ‘taken for grantedness’ of mobile technologies and how mobile communication devices have become embedded in society. Ling (2012, p. 6) uses the term ‘social mediation technologies’ in that they ‘are legitimated artifacts and systems governed by group-based reciprocal expectations that enable, but also set conditions for, the maintenance of the social sphere’. I have, however, chosen to use the phrase ‘mobile internet technologies’ in this book as it is a clear reminder of the mobility, connectivity and technological affordances (see Hutchby, 2001a) that these personalised devices combine. Because they are now a taken-for-granted part of everyday life, it is easy to forget, even as adults whose childhood experiences were not played out through interactions with mobile internet technologies, what life was like before we had these smart pocket-sized bundles of digital capabilities in our pockets and handbags. In our everyday lives, they have indeed become taken for granted (Ling, 2012), and also implied by ‘taken for granted’ is that we are almost constantly contactable by and connected to our family, friends, colleagues and the wider society through the internet. What implications does this have on our family lives, friendships, relationships and working lives? We can contact others in a variety of ways – call and talk to them, send a text message or a picture message, we can talk face to face and see each other, we can send a video or we can email, update our status and get in touch on Facebook or tweet – to name but a few. We can communicate from wherever we are – on a bus or train, the street or beach, or even from the middle of a field – provided we are connected in some way to a network. Arguably, this provides us with a sense of security as a result of our constant connectivity. In turn, we can also be reached by our families, friends and partners, but if we cannot get in touch with people or if they do not respond almost immediately, in some instances, a sense of doubt and insecurity often sets in: ‘Why haven’t they texted me back?’ or ‘I haven’t heard from them in days – I hope that they are OK’. So, whilst we are reassured and gain security through mobile internet technologies, they simultaneously make us feel insecure and incite anxiety (Bond, 2010). Furthermore, we can also play games, find out the latest news, check football scores and weather forecasts; we can buy things whilst on a train or walking down the street; we can watch videos, catch up on missed television programmes and download podcasts whilst waiting for a bus or sitting in the dentist’s waiting room. According to Mascheroni and Ólafsson (2013, p. 11),

the place where children are more likely to use their smartphones at least once a day is actually their own bedroom (39%) or another room at home (37%). This suggests that children value privacy and convenience more than mobility – perhaps because the smartphone is always ‘at hand’ and doesn’t need to be turned on.

Through these mobile internet devices, we have become both constant consumers and producers of media and digital artefacts, as we can now take, upload and share videos and images from virtually anywhere, all at the touch of a screen and within seconds. The most private spaces and our most intimate thoughts can now be made public by sharing them online with our network of family, friends and the wider networked public instantly.

Just considering our own use of mobile technologies in our everyday lives reveals a highly complex and complicated network of relationships between people, things, devices and software and digital content and media. But these activities are all carried out within other local and widely changing sociopolitical, technical and cultural contexts. Changing norms and values in relation to technology use are much debated and discussed; for example, the acceptability of using mobile internet technologies at mealtimes or in meetings is often context-specific and also depends on the type of meal, whom it is with or the nature and purpose of the meeting. Even organising our day-to-day lives now often depends on digital calendars that sync with laptops, phones and tablets via a cloud-based storage facility. How did we live without them?

As adults, the chances are that we may remember life pre-mobile internet connectivity and almost certainly will recollect a childhood (at least some of it!) without the plethora of mobile internet devices that have become taken for granted in most children’s everyday lives today. Even from a very young age, children are given smartphones and tablets for entertainment and amusement purposes. Any trip around a supermarket will show the aisles adorned with toddlers sitting in supermarket trolleys with a touch-screen mobile device in their hands as they swipe at various characters and interact with one of the hundreds of apps designed for pre-school children and the very early years of childhood. According to Mascheroni and Ólafsson (2013), ‘Children are using the internet and get a mobile phone or a smartphone at ever younger ages’ (p. 6). The age at which children are able to interact with mobile internet technologies is, indeed, getting lower and lower as touch-screen technology has now negated the need for literacy skills in performing tasks, and, coupled with the advances in software design, children are using mobile internet technologies, albeit ones belonging to their parents, before they are out of nappies. The purpose of this book is not to examine the interaction of children and mobile technologies from a developmental or an educational perspective but rather to examine the quotidian nature of mobile internet technologies in childhood.

Children and adults have very different perceptions of the internet (Livingstone et al., 2011a), and, in relation to contemporary childhoods, the only people who understand what it is like to be a child and use mobile internet technologies in their everyday lives are children themselves. This is especially apparent when considering the rapid technological advances and adoption patterns that we have seen in the last few years. What I set out to do in this book is to examine the complex interrelationships between childhood, as a social and cultural construction, mobile internet technologies and children’s everyday and, perhaps, seemingly mundane experiences. In considering the ‘unnoticed’ (see Jacobsen, 2009) and the taken-for-grantedness (Ling, 2012), I explore and aim to make visible the embeddedness of mobile internet technologies in contemporary childhood, and also consider an analysis of children’s everyday lives and offer theoretical explanations. Inspired by James et al. (2010) and others, and the social studies of childhood paradigm, I draw on theoretical approaches in childhood studies to explore the changing nature of childhood in late modernity and on socio-technical studies to discuss the nature of children’s everyday interactions with mobile internet technologies in late modernity.

The structure of the book

In the next chapter I provide some background developments in my approach to the analysis offered here in framing the debates helpful to understanding the context of childhood studies itself and the theoretical frameworks helpful to understanding childhood. As part of the Childhood and Youth series published by Palgrave Macmillan, this book aims to provide a critical analysis of childhood, mobile internet technologies and children’s everyday experiences and thus contribute to the continually growing body of literature in childhood and youth studies. Arguably, any consideration of present-day childhoods should not only address technology in the wider sense but also specifically consider mobile internet technologies, as few childhoods remain untouched by them. Also, the analysis presented in this book mainly rests on contemporary childhoods. Chapter 2 also outlines the importance of understanding childhood from a historical perspective in order to contextualise children’s experiences and to illustrate how both social and cultural constructions of childhood and also children’s lived experiences are influenced by a myriad of different elements, including time and space. Just as, historically, wider socio-economic and political agendas have underpinned both constructions and reconstructions of childhood, so the same is also true of contemporary childhoods and children’s lived realities. By considering the history of childhood and historical approaches to understanding childhood, we can gain an in-depth understanding of how some of the dominant ideologies we associate with, and still to some extent value in, childhood today came to be so influential. The dominant ideologies of innocence, incompleteness and vulnerability impact not only how childhood is understood but also how children are treated by adults, other children and the society in general. I draw on both theories of childhood and also broader sociological explanations to outline late to modern childhoods and wider social change to consider childhood in late modernity. The analysis includes an examination of the risk society thesis (see Beck, 1992, 2009; Giddens, 1990, 1991) to consider how risk and risk anxiety are central and not only contemporary constructions of childhood (Scott et al., 1998). These debates are drawn upon further in Chapter 6, which considers children and online risk. The importance of understanding space and how theories of understanding childhood have been influenced by the increasing importance of children’s rights and the conceptualisation of children as active social agents and experts in their own lives have also been considered. Finally, Chapter 2 considers an explanatory framework for exploring children’s everyday experiences and reviewing what Qvortrup (2011) describes as the multiplicity of childhoods in themselves.

The chapter offers a developmental trajectory for how technology has been studied and understood previously, just as Chapter 2 did in relation to childhood. My approach to initially separate out childhood and technology is a deliberate one, in order to make the separate entities of my overall analysis visible in the explanations that emerge in the later chapters of the book. Again, the importance of the historical context is emphasised here as I examine the evolution of the television and the telephone as two very different technologies, before moving on to consider the internet. As argued in the opening paragraphs of this Introduction, mobile internet technologies are highly complex and even a brief consideration reveals the complexity of the technology under discussion in this book. The approaches to understanding television (one-to-many), the telephone (one-to-one) and the internet (as an interactive, networked public) are all essential to understanding converged networked mobile technologies. I draw on a variety of theoretical approaches to understanding technology and media in this chapter, as it is not just the technological functionality of the device that is under scrutiny here but also the digital content. According to Siapera (2012, p. 6), ‘the central question regarding (new) media and technology concerns the nature of their relationship with people and society’. Using Matthewman’s (2011) call for theoretical pluralism, I set out previous frameworks of explanation for technology and society and finally reconsider theorising childhood, technology and society.

Having examined approaches for understanding childhood in Chapter 2 and for understanding technology in Chapter 3, Chapter 4 combines both childhood and technology to examine how they are studied, examined and understood and the different methodological approaches used in research. The development of more participatory child-centred research methods, influenced by the social studies of childhood (James et al., 2010) and children’s rights (Alderson, 2008; Kellet, 2005a, 2005b) has changed the way childhood is studied. The prominence of ‘scientific’ approaches which were previously dominated by developmental psychology and the traditionally adult-initiated education studies has more recently been challenged in favour of trying to understand children’s own viewpoints and their lived experiences through the adoption of more ethnographic approaches and a qualitative turn. Ethical considerations and reflexivity in research are also examined in order to be able to interrogate methodologically the research and relevant studies published on children and mobile internet technology. There is, however, still relatively little which specifically examines mobile internet technologies (Livingstone et al., 2011a). I have, however, been able to draw extensively in this book on the most up-to-date and comprehensive study of children, young people and the internet – the EU Kids Online research which surveyed more than 25,000 children across Europe (see Livingstone et al., 2011a) and a number of other published smaller-scale research studies on a variety of mobile technology-related topics in relation to childhood, including my own study on children, mobile phones and risk (Bond, 2010, 2011, 2013). The key themes to emerge from this analysis of the research to date are discussed in the following three chapters – ‘Relationships’ (Chapter 5), ‘Risk’ (Chapter 6) and ‘Rhetoric and Realities’ (Chapter 7).

The focus of Chapter 5 is childhood, mobile internet technologies and children’s everyday relationships. It includes a discussion on their family relationships, relationships with their peers and also their intimate sexual relationships before providing an account of children’s self-identity in relation to mobile internet technologies in their everyday lives. Children use mobile internet technologies to manage and maintain their relationships and view mobile technologies, especially the mobile phone, as essential to their everyday relationships, claiming that you cannot have friends without one. I draw on the concept of gifting (see Maus, 2002; Berking, 1999) as important to understanding text and image exchange in children’s relationships and Goffman’s (1959) Presentation of Self in Everyday Life to consider how young people use mobile internet technologies in their performativity of self-identity. Social media is about self-presentation (Murthy, 2012), and children are reflexive in their construction of self-identity through their interactions with others mediated through mobile internet technologies (Bond, 2010). Furthermore, mobile internet technologies facilitate intimacy in children’s relationships and provide contact with parents and friends, and children actively use mobile internet technologies to maintain and manage their day-to-day relationships. An important aspect of children’s self-identity is a gendered, sexual self-identity, especially as they get older, and mobile internet technologies are providing spaces – virtual spaces – for children to develop intimate, sexual relationships and explore each other’s bodies (Bond, 2011).

Whilst children’s intimate, sexual relationships are often viewed in adult discourses as risky, it is to the wider landscapes of risk that Chapter 6 turns. Children and adults perceive risks differently (Livingstone et al., 2011a), and it is the subjective understandings of risk, especially that of the children themselves, that underpin the debates presented in this chapter. Drawing on the findings from the EU Kids Online study (Livingstone et al., 2011a) amongst others, Chapter 6 examines the phenomena of cyberbullying – the subject of much recent media attention – before moving on to discuss the risks of sexting and pornography in relation to mobile internet technologies and children’s everyday experiences. The final risk considered in Chapter 6 is that of pro-eating disorder websites as an example of potentially harmful online communities and environments, like the pro-self-harm sites, which are currently causing considerable concern. There are, of course, other related risks such as violent content and gaming, but there is not enough space within one chapter to cover all risks in detail, and this is comprehensively offered elsewhere (see Livingstone and Haddon, 2009; Livingstone et al., 2012). But, using the theoretical explanations of risk offered by Beck (1992) and Giddens (1990, 1991), this chapter argues that mobile internet technologies are blurring the boundaries of risk in late modernity and also those of childhood challenging the dominant ideologies of children as innocent victims. Such discourses on risk have, of course, important policy implications but the balance between protecting children and encouraging participation in the information society is problematic.

In Chapter 7, the educational underpinnings for encouraging participation are critically examined to propose that many policy initiatives on technology and education and, more recently, mobile internet technologies in education are deterministic (Buckingham, 2007; Selwyn, 2011a). The reality of many children’s everyday lives remains far from the ideological discourses on technology magically transforming educational agendas and children’s learning experiences. Whilst a review of the research to date suggests that iPads have a positive effect on children’s engagement with learning opportunities (Clark and Luckin, 2013), the wider social and educational environments are extremely important but often ignored in the technology/education debates. In order to adopt a broader spectrum of analysis, I draw on Fenwick and Edwards’s (2010, p. 1) suggestion that to ‘take forward fresh agendas for intervening in educational research, policy and practice. Our [my] use of actor-network theory is not for telling us about educational issues; it is a way of intervening in educational issues to reframe how we might enact and engage with them’. My point here is that too often educational theory and pedagogical perspectives on technology-enhanced learning fail to acknowledge the stark realities of inequality in many children’s lives. Drawing on examples of poverty and disability, I argue here that there are marked differences and hidden divides in the so-called digital generation that cannot and should not be ignored. We need to move towards a greater understanding of diversity in understanding childhood, mobile internet technologies and the reality, as opposed to the rhetoric, of children’s lived experiences. To date, there is still very little research that explores children’s lived experiences and even less in relation to marginalised childhoods. Much research, which focuses on the children’s perspectives, including children living with a disability or in poverty, is needed in order to address the glaring inequalities in access to mobile internet technologies and the opportunities that online environments can afford.

By way of a conclusion, Chapter 8, as the final chapter in this account, examines the main arguments presented in the book, but it does so through a lens of children’s rights. Concerns over the risks in relation to children’s use of mobile internet technologies have prompted new legal and policy initiatives to protect children. However, balancing children’s rights for protection from harm and simultaneously upholding their rights for participation in the information society remains problematic. Whilst childhood, mobile internet technologies and children’s everyday experiences is a relatively new topic of enquiry, it is one that is currently attracting much interest. My aim in this book has been to open up some theoretical perspectives in studying childhood in late modernity, and I hope to provide readers with some alternative discussions on mobile internet technologies currently under debate. And so it is to childhood that our attention now turns.

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Understand...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Understanding Childhood
• 3. Understanding Technology
• 4. Researching Childhood, Mobile Internet Technologies and Everyday Experiences
• 5. Relationships
• 6. Risk
• 7. Rhetoric and Realities
• 8. Some Concluding Thoughts
• References
• Index