Children and the Internet: Great Expectations, Challenging Realities

BY: Sonia Livingstone

Is the internet really transforming children and young people’s lives? Is the so-called “digital generation” genuinely benefiting from exciting new opportunities? And, worryingly, facing new risks?

This major new book by a leading researcher addresses these pressing questions. It deliberately avoids a techno-celebratory approach and, instead, interprets children’s everyday practices of internet use in relation to the complex and changing historical and cultural conditions of childhood in late modernity. Uniquely, Children and the Internet reveals the complex dynamic between online opportunities and online risks, exploring this in relation to much debated issues such as:

  • Digital in/exclusion
  • Learning and literacy
  • Peer networking and privacy
  • Civic participation
  • Risk and harm

Drawing on current theories of identity, development, education and participation, this book includes a refreshingly critical account of the challenging realities undermining the great expectations held out for the internet – from governments, teachers, parents and children themselves.

The book:

  • Includes major new contribution to the hot topic of children and internet from one of the world’s leading researchers in this area.
  • Considers children’s everyday practices of internet use in relation to the complex socio-cultural conditions of contemporary childhood.
  • Presents original research whilst also surveying the rich body of literature that defines this field.
  • Concludes with a forward-looking framework for policy and regulation designed to advance children’s rights both on- and offline.

Book available from Wiley, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble

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