ABSTRACT
In recent years, various studies examining the way children use the new means of communication have expressed concern for the possible effects that these tools might have on their development (Buckingham, 1999; Livingstone, 2001; Sefton-Green, 1999). In common with earlier studies of television, many of these reports contrast the percentage of use for these new technologies with those of more established systems (JohnsonSmaragdi, D’Haenens, Krotz, & Hasebrink, 1998; Livingstone, 1998; Van der Voort et al., 1998), discuss the ways that children might be protected from the violence present on the Internet and in computer games (Magrid, 1998; Oswell, 1999), and analyze how schools might use these new technologies to help teachers and pupils in the teaching-learning process (AlberoAndrés, 2001; Buckingham, 1998). In analyzing the way that children and adolescents use the Internet, there is also a tendency to see this technology as an ideal vehicle for developing skills of reasoning, creativity, and communication (Castells, 2001; Tapscott, 1998). In general, however, the research takes a rather superficial look at what is a particularly complex issue. Technological determinism is still, it would seem, the dominant paradigm in many of these perspectives, and this impedes the raising of questions that might help us understand how children are integrating the new technologies of communication into their daily lives, which elements are shaping this integration, and what implications this might have in the design of objectives and functions for schools in today’s society.
