ABSTRACT
When exploring young people's computer use in the home, for example, we need to recognise that children themselves bring into the family, from their school experiences, from their peer group cultures and from their media cultures more widely, potentially different views of what a computer might 'be'. If the computer was usually seen as a shared resource, however, different families had widely divergent views of how that resource should be managed. In other households where the computer was seen as an interloper, marginal to family life, it was located in spaces where it could be monitored, or to which access could be restricted. The computer was seen as something against which the family needed to erect barriers in order to protect other activities. This assertion of 'ownership', and the rights to claim time to use the computer that accompany it, was evident on a number of other fronts.
