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six - Online opportunities
- Edited by Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science, Leslie Haddon, London School of Economics and Political Science, Anke Görzig, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Book:
- Children, Risk and Safety on the Internet
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 07 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 18 July 2012, pp 73-86
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- Chapter
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Summary
This chapter analyses children's take-up of online opportunities and their outcomes, based on an analysis of the range and types of children’s online activities. There are certain continuities between children’s online and offline worlds – searching for information, entertainment and gaming and social networking online are, to a large extent, extensions or modifications of practices that are located in everyday life, that is, they are not particularly on one side or the other of the ‘real’/‘virtual’ divide. But there is little question that the internet has not added to the breadth and depth of children's everyday opportunities.
The EU Kids Online research has shown that the internet usage of children in Europe involves constant negotiation of opportunities and risks which, if well balanced, will contribute to a meaningful life, a valued identity and satisfactory relations with others (Livingstone and Haddon, 2009a, p 4). Analysing internet usage in terms of opportunities and risks requires its examination through the conceptual lenses of structure and agency. Agency refers to freedom, choice, control and motivation; structure is the set of rules and resources. The starting point of this chapter is children's agency. Identifying children's online activities allows reflection on their knowledge, interests and motivations. Internet usage practices connect the agency side and its social context, within the structure of offline and online activity, which enables certain factors and restricts others.
Research on children's online activities employs the concept of a ‘ladder of opportunities’ (Livingstone and Helsper, 2007; Kalmus et al, 2009) in order to structure the types of activities in which children engage, in a systematic way. It suggests a progression through stages of use. According to this approach, progress is related to increasing skills and more complex internet usage. The ‘ladder of opportunities’ approach is based on the notion that children fall into groups based on the range of the opportunities they use, from information-related sources to communication, to more advanced uses, such as online content creation, practised by only a few.
While this framework has some merits, it should be noted that the analysis of EU Kids Online data in this chapter suggests that some of these activities should be grouped rather than considered in terms of a step-by-step advancement, and also, some activities might fit into more than one group, depending on the backgrounds of the children involved.
six - Opportunities and benefits online
- Edited by Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science, Leslie Haddon, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Book:
- Kids Online
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 July 2022
- Print publication:
- 30 September 2009, pp 71-82
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- Chapter
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Summary
The internet and other online technologies provide children across Europe with a range of opportunities and benefits. The main opportunities can be classified into four categories: education, learning and digital literacy; participation and civic engagement; creativity and self-expression; and identity and social connection (Livingstone and Haddon, 2009; and see Chapter One, this volume). Research evidence suggests that adults and children agree that children use the internet mostly as an educational resource, for entertainment, games and fun, for searching for global information and for social networking and sharing experiences with distant others (Hasebrink et al, 2009).
The question about children's opportunities and benefits online can be theoretically contextualised by the notions of structure and agency. Structure refers to rules and resources, which are ‘always both enabling and constraining, in virtue of the inherent relation between structure and agency’ (Giddens, 1984: 169). Rules and resources related to children's internet use include parental guidance, rules and restrictions, material resources for using the internet at home and at school (for example broadband connection, a child's own computer), the availability of time to be spent online and so on. Meanwhile, the concept of agency has been associated with a long list of terms including freedom, creativity, self-hood, choice, motivation, will, initiative and so on (see Emirbayer and Mische, 1998), where ‘agency refers not to the intentions people have in doing things but to their capability of doing those things in the first place’ (Giddens, 1984: 9).
Online opportunities are themselves interconnected and they all depend on children's agency and literacies. The significance of the internet for participatory activities lies in the shift from the ‘traditional’ public sphere to everyday active participation in a networked, highly heterogeneous and open public sphere (Burgess, 2007). But making use of any online opportunities connected to participation and civic engagement largely relies on communicative competencies in general and digital skills in particular. Hence, digital literacy can be seen as an essential competency important for democratic practices (Dahlgren, 2006). Digital literacy is also linked to participation through user creativity, that is, through various practices involving online content creation. Moreover, such creativity is essentially social as it needs individuals to be capable of using, transforming and extending information in a way that enables other individuals acting in the social field to recognise and acquire the information (Csíkszentmihályi, 1996).