Children and Young People’s Digital Lifeworlds

This chapter introduces the ecosystem of children and young people’s digital lifeworlds globally and reminds the reader why researching this social group in the digital age matters, particularly in Majority World contexts such as Africa. Many African nations’ communicative and socio-political practices and structures are being shaped by technology, yet little is known about the influence of digital technology on the daily lives of crucial populations, particularly children and adolescents. This chapter equally presents elements of the research that form the backbone of this book, its aim, and key questions, as well as brief overviews of the methodology and theoretical underpinnings. The conceptual frameworks underpinning this book, such as the digital divide, digital technology, rural and urban dichotomies, and young people, are also explored.

This book is based on the research that investigated the digital lifeworlds of children in rural and urban areas in two states or provinces in Nigeria, namely Anambra State and Federal Capital Territory (FCT)-Abuja, located in the Southeast and North Central regions, respectively. This chapter pays attention to both context and background by offering an overview of the study locations in Nigeria. The chapter traces a historical overview of Nigerian media, within which digital media technologies and ecologies have emerged, spanning colonial, postcolonial, and democratic periods. The chapter also sketches the growth of both traditional and digital media in the country and offers an overview of how digital technology is broadly positioned on the African continent.

This chapter reviews scholarly literature on the beginnings and trajectories of media and children’s research from the 1950s to the present. This review illustrates how young people and media scholarship has shifted from the hypodermic media effect paradigm to the era of active audiences and audience negotiation today. Unsurprisingly, it appears that following the moral and media panics of the old paradigm, new forms of anxiety have emerged in the digital age regarding children’s and young people’s safety, resilience, and vulnerability while using digital technologies. In addition, this chapter dives into the current landscape of the digital environment in relation to children and young people in Majority World Countries and concludes by identifying gaps that the entire book fills within scholarly literature.

This chapter discusses the theoretical, methodological, and ethical approaches to conducting research with children in specific, local contexts. It is a journey from negotiating theories and methodological decision-making to data collection, while highlighting the various processes and challenges involved in negotiating access to the actual participants used in both the focus groups and the surveys conducted. There is a conscious and deliberate decision to foreground the entire research on a child-centred approach, from theory, methodology, and ethics to analyses, making all of these components interdependent. Due to contextual differences and the nascent nature of digital media and youth research in Nigeria, conducting research with children and young people in such contexts can present unique ethical and methodological challenges. Such dilemmas dealt with include adult–child power relationships, gendered and group dynamics, problems of language and cognition, techno-shame, shy and assertive participants, the challenges of conducting fieldwork in school settings, and absentee participants.

In this chapter, children’s access to and connection to digital technologies are analysed, beginning with their socio-demographic characteristics. The chapter highlights the centrality of mobile technology in children’s digital lives and paints a broader picture of how mobile phones are configuring and reconfiguring digital connectivity in the local context. Children in Nigeria have access to a range of digital technologies, including (in order of prevalence) mobile phones, personal computers and laptops, the Internet, and social media. The majority of their access to the Internet and social media is via the mobile Internet, that is, Internet-capable (or smart) phones. Their device-based access is both direct (when they have their own phones) and indirect or alternative (through shared use or similar means).

This sixth chapter analyses and discusses the diverse uses and outcomes of digital technology in children’s lives. The chapter facilitates an appreciation for the particularities of their technological appropriation as children growing up in particular circumstances. The chapter’s themes emphasise the notion of domestication, through which adolescents metaphorically adapt technologies to their realities while negotiating childhood. Discussed in this chapter are a number of broad themes focusing on socialities, especially communication and interaction with friends and family, cultivation and maintenance of peer culture, entertainment, self-care and destressing, as well as educational productivity and information-seeking. The chapter concludes by shedding light on factors, particularly a lack of digital literacy and skills, that prevent children from fully exploring and taking advantage of digital opportunities.

This chapter explores children’s media tastes and preferences, moving from digital media to traditional or legacy media. Second, it analyses their perceptions of digital technologies as material aspects of their everyday lives and childhood. Both aspects of this chapter are important for understanding the children’s views about different media typologies and getting a sense of what each media does for or means to them. This chapter highlights the unfiltered opinions and concerns of teens regarding digital technologies and their uses. They gave quite revealing yet complex views of their digital media use and practices in ways that make Livingstone and Sefton-Green’s (2016, p. 4) description of children’s lives as an “intensely felt, bounded world of childhood” and one in which “much of children’s lives are relatively inaccessible to the adults around them,” quite relevant.

Dimensions of digital mediation and gatekeeping of adolescents’ usage of digital media are crucial aspects of this book. This chapter emphasises the role that decision-makers like parents, guardians, schools, and adults play in how children navigate technology in daily life. Research evidence has shown that “what is often less pronounced in research is knowledge regarding how parental digital mediation is being received by children and youth themselves” (Adorjan et al., Parental Technology Governance: Teenagers’ Understandings and Responses to Parental Digital Mediation. Qualitative Sociology Review, 18(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.18.2.06, 2022, p. 114). This chapter describes, from the children’s perspective, how adult decision-makers play the role of gatekeepers or mediators in two distinct dimensions: those who encourage and support children, and those who discourage children and play the moral panic card. Digital gatekeepers or mediators are operationalised as the human actors who control and/or mediate the children’s access to and use of digital technologies.

The topic of the kinds of capability and power afforded by technology is crucial to assessing the ways in which digital technology helps children in Nigeria assert a level of control in everyday life. This is particularly important because of a broad problem in Nigerian society of children being misrepresented and misconstrued as “immature” social groupings, incapable of articulating their experiences, undisciplined, and needing constant adult supervision and direction. This chapter examines how adolescents in Nigeria perceive their agency in relation to technology usage, as well as how their peers and social circle view their technology usage and the implications for their sense of power and control. The chapter reveals that the teens’ agency is precarious, as they face pervasive challenges such as lack of support and skills, social pressure, and negative feelings from their techno-savvy or techno-sceptical circles.

This last chapter concludes this book. It provides a summary of the key thesis, broader implications, conclusions, and recommendations for policy, praxis, research, and Nigeria-specific directions, based on a careful blend of key findings and discussions throughout the book, as well as broad and current issues observed in scholarship and global best practice. Limitations of the research project are also highlighted.