Parenting for a digital future : how hopes and fears about technology shape children's lives

In the decades it takes to bring up a child, parents face challenges that are both helped and hindered by the fact that they are living through a period of unprecedented digital innovation. Drawing on extensive research with parents both rich and poor, parenting toddlers to teenagers, this book reveals how digital technologies give parenting struggles a distinctive character, as parents determine how to forge new territory with little precedent, or support. It argues that, in late modernity, parents are both more burdened with responsibilities and yet increasingly charged with respecting and developing the agency of their child—leaving much to be negotiated. The book charts how parents enact authority and values through digital technologies—as “screen time,” videogames, and social media become ways of both being together and of setting boundaries, with digital technologies introducing valued opportunities and new sources of risk. To light their way, parents comb through the hazy memories of their own childhoods and look toward hard-to-imagine futures. This results in deeply diverse parenting in the present, as parents move between embracing, resisting, or balancing the role of technology in their own and their children’s lives. This book moves beyond the panicky headlines to offer a deeply researched exploration of what it means to parent in a period of significant social and technological change. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative research in the United Kingdom, the book offers conclusions and insights relevant to parents, policymakers, educators, and researchers everywhere. "In the decades it takes to bring up a child, parents face challenges that are both helped and hindered by the fact that they are living through a period of unprecedented digital innovation. Drawing on extensive research with diverse parents, this book reveals how digital technologies give personal and political parenting struggles a distinctive character, as parents determine how to forge new territory with little precedent, or support. The book reveals the pincer movement of parenting in late modernity. Parents are both more burdened with responsibilities and charged with respecting the agency of their child-leaving much to negotiate in today's 'democratic' families. The book charts how parents now often enact authority and values through digital technologies-as 'screen time,' games, or social media become ways of both being together and setting boundaries. The authors show how digital technologies introduce both valued opportunities and new sources of risk. To light their way, parents comb through the hazy memories of their own childhoods and look toward varied imagined futures. This results in deeply diverse parenting in the present, as parents move between embracing, resisting, or balancing the role of technology in their own and their children's lives. This book moves beyond the panicky headlines to offer a deeply researched exploration of what it means to parent in a period of significant social and technological change. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative research in the United Kingdom, the book offers conclusions and insights relevant to parents, policymakers, educators, and researchers everywhere"-- Provided by publisher In the decades it takes to bring up a child, parents face challenges that are both helped and hindered by the fact that they are living through a period of unprecedented digital innovation. In Parenting for a Digital Future , Sonia Livingstone and Alicia Blum-Ross draw on extensive and diverse qualitative and quantitative research with a range of parents in the UK to reveal how digital technologies characterize parenting in late modernity, as parents determine how to forge new territory with little precedent or support. They chart how parents often enact authority and values through digital technologies since "screen time," games, and social media have become both ways of being together and of setting boundaries. Parenting for a Digital Future moves beyond the panicky headlines to offer a deeply researched exploration of what it means to parent in a period of significant social and technological change. In contrast to panicky headlines about clueless parents and kids glued to screens, 'Parenting for a Digital Future' offers a balanced, in-depth exploration of the realities of parenting today. Drawing on interviews with and surveys of diverse parents - rich and poor, parenting toddlers to teenagers - the text offers a warm and deeply human depiction of how parents' hopes and fears about technology influence how they remember their own pasts, how they parent in the present, and crucially, how they shape their children's futures