ABSTRACT
YouTube can feel like a giant, networked family album. It is filled with images of young children in daily life. No book about “kids on YouTube” would be complete without considering how families make media together, particularly in the case of parents with very young children (under 10 years old). In the United States, 30 to 49 year olds, who often have young children, are now just as likely as are 18 to 29 year olds to upload videos (Purcell 2010). To understand how kids develop media literacies through everyday video practices, it is important to consider the experiences of kids who are growing up in heavily mediated environments within the spaces of the home. Kids may not necessarily adopt their parents’ media practices, but growing up in these heavily mediated environments means being exposed to their techno-savvy parents’ models of living and learning in technologized ways.
