ABSTRACT
The landscape of childhood in the twenty-first century increasingly involves technology. As information and communication technologies (ICTs) become ubiquitous in homes, schools, and the spaces in between, children are plugged in and online with greater frequency and at a younger age (Harwood and Asal 2007). These include technologies designed expressly for children, as well as adult technologies which children appropriate for academic tasks, entertainment and communication. Parents, educators and researchers have raised concerns about how children interact with these technologies, the safety and privacy of such technologies for children, and the difficulties of providing age-appropriate play and learning opportunities for connected youth (see, for example, British Library and Joint Information Systems Committee 2008; Donald and Spry 2007; ISTTF 2008). Concerns regarding mobile phones, for instance, often lead to highly charged, emotive responses aimed at reducing the risks associated with such technologies (Flanagan 2007; Goggin 2006b and Chapter 8 in this volume). These reactions focus our attention on children as victimized consumers and privilege the perspective of a single stakeholder, the parent. As Druin (2002) puts it, the all-learning child sits in stark contrast to the all-knowing adult. Consequently, children and young people can become disempowered in decisions about how they use technologies, as well as how technologies are designed to meet their needs and activities. This desire to protect young technology consumers runs contrary to the increasingly participatory techniques intended to give greater voice to all users in the design and development of the very technologies they are using. Concerns about the potential and actual uses of mobile phones have
prompted policy responses from various levels of society: government, business, educators and even within families. As Spry notes: ‘Some of these impacts and responses can be traced as continuations of earlier changes to the mediated social landscapes; others are regarded as more specifically related to the functions and uses of the mobile phone’ (2007: 296).
