We live in a society where the information and communication technologies (ICT) play a growing and fundamental role, which has led to labels such as, since Mc Luhan, the global village, or, more recently, the information, knowledge or network society. Children are having an increasing access, and at younger ages, to the information and communication technologies, in many contexts, especially at home. This partially results from the investment made by either the State, in different countries of the European Union (Balanskat et al., 2006), or by their families, which have increasingly been providing its access to children (Almeida et al., 2008; Rodrigues & Mata, 2004).

Underlying this public and private investment are beliefs concerning the need to promote the digital literacy of future generations as well as the role of these technologies in schoolwork, based on the assumption that these technologies have in itself the potential to lead to a new generation, called by some the "digital natives" (Prensky, 2001). According to this view, the mere presence of these devices in everyday life of young people would provide a spontaneous and effortless learning, and, therefore, an automatic integration into the new social order characterized by Castells (2007) as the network society.

Through a critical approach on the impact of technology in the construction of social change (Lyon, 1992), we try to understand how are built children's relationships with ICT, and, in particular, how each child’s family background - as a context of socialization - affects this relationship, that is to say, how the family seeks to mediate these uses (setting rules and monitoring), considering their (school and digital) resources. We return to the concept of coordination by Kellerhals and Montandon (1991), who define it as the way an agent of socialization, namely the family, mediates the influences of other agents, considering two dimensions: 1) the mission that attaches to an external agent; and 2) the participation of the family in the socialization process of this agent. We intend to examine to what extent this work of family coordination is exercised and influences the relationship between children and new technologies in differents social backgrounds. Thus, we try to find some clues in order to understand how social inequalities concerning children’s relation with ICT are built from the family context.

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