ABSTRACT
It is a commonplace of media/technology research that there appears to be a “digital gender divide” between girls and boys and their voluntary engagement with computers and technological games. In turn, there is a concern that these play or leisure activities directly relate to the development of skills that are highly valued in today’s society-for example, playing certain video games may prepare boys for future education with computer simulation and careers as pilots, engineers, computer programmers, and so on (Cassell and Jenkins 1998: 11; Buckingham 2000). Indeed, computer gaming culture as a whole seems to be a male-dominated domain (Kline 2002). Unwittingly, much of the discourse seems to repeat the “girls and math” illogic of the 1980s where girls were seen as “deficient” and had to catch up, as was pointed out by Walkerdine (1989). At the same time, the knowledge girls do acquire is perceived as being of little or no value because the activities girls engage in either on the screen or around the computer appear to reproduce established gender stereotypes of fashion doll play, shopping, chatting, and so on (Thomas and Walkerdine 2000). In the popular and academic literature there is much discussion addressing dangers for children, most particularly for girls, on the Web. Stemming from this, questions arise about how child and girl users might negotiate the unsafe space of the Web as a play space.
