ABSTRACT
Nowadays, a technologically rich home is the social space where contemporary children are exposed to multiple screen and digital artefacts (i.e. television, smart phones, computers, tablets, digital toys) from the very first months of their lives (Marsh 2004), and where they interact with technology under the mediation and rules set up by adults in the family (Chaudron 2015). At home, children participate in technology-based practices and develop attitudes toward the “digital culture” that is and will be part of their experiences. This appropriation is influenced by the socioeconomic environment of the family – where technology can be more or less present and/or accessible and where family beliefs and values about technology frame the texture of the conversations between parents and children around technology, as well as the absence of this topic in family life. Thus, home emerges as a critical context in which children’s socialization in digital culture is initiated; it is through family members and other intimate relevant adults that children learn to locate themselves in the world and to become members of the digital society in which they live by imitating, rejecting, claiming and exploring digital technology (Lahikainen, Mälkiä and Repo 2017).
