Secret Lives of Children in the Digital Age

Book excerpt: A 2023 SPE Outstanding Book Award Winner 2023 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award Secret Lives of Children in the Digital Age: Disruptive Devices and Resourceful Learners offers an examination of the impact on children, their families and their teachers, as digital technologies and new literacy practices have rapidly transformed how children learn, play and communicate. While ease of access to enormous knowledge bases presents many benefits and advantages, mobile screen technologies are often perceived by parents and teachers as disruptive and worrisome. Developed from a wide range of the authors’ research over the past decade to an examination of remote learning during the COVID 19 pandemic, this book posits that while teachers, parents and governments are focused on protecting children, what is often neglected is children’s own agency and capacity to engage with mobile technologies in ways that support them in pursuing their own interests, pleasures and learning. This text works to disrupt boundaries in research, policy and practice, between home and school, and across virtual and actual worlds, positioning children as both users of media texts and coproducers of digitally mediated knowledge, with peers, family and teachers. Secret Lives of Children in the Digital Age brings together over a decade of shared research, conversations, writing and friendships across diverse geographies. Over the past decade, digital technologies have rapidly transformed how children learn, play and communicate. Tablet devices such as iPads are now ubiquitous in the lives of many children. Such devices are easy to use and provide multimodal options (i.e. operable via touch, speech, and icons, as well as conventional text). Users do not need to be conventionally literate to have access to powerful search engines, social media platforms, a range of ‘apps’ and games, or to be able to share their own creations on publication venues such as YouTube, TikTok and more. While such ease of access can present many benefits and advantages when positioned in relation to children’s use, but this access is not without concern, since mobile screen technologies are often perceived by parents and teachers as disruptive and worrisome, with popular media ramping up fears via publication of sensational articles. Secret Lives of Children in the Digital Age contributes to research on digital literacies, and offers a pedagogical examination of digital possibilities for bringing playfulness and innovation into learning. Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Literacy Research | Qualitative Research Methods | Early Literacy | Research Methods in Language and Literacy | Introduction to Qualitative Research | New and Digital Literacies | Digital Media Education | Theories of Language and Literacy