This article discusses strategies and choices that can help researchers faced with the challenge of becoming insiders to children’s digital cultures. Based on a study of children’s perspectives on their digital practices, this analysis encompasses the strong connection between the online and offline spaces were children perform their own cultures. It focuses on barriers limiting the researcher’s participation in these worlds, especially the ones related to questions of time, privacy, communication codes, social expectations and power issues. The use of different techniques, such as participant observation, interviews and participatory methods, is analysed according to its potential to consider children as active research participants, rather than objects, as well as establish a connection and a research relationship based on mutual trust and respect. The article concludes that ‘guided tours’ and observation of group encounters are excellent tools to access and understand children’s digital worlds.

Recognizing childhood as a social construct and children as social actors, capable of constructing specific cultural codes and in fact doing so more and more through the use of digital media, this research explored the meanings behind children’s digital experiences, from their own terms of reference. It specifically addressed children’s interpretation of risk and opportunity. Mediating entertainment, learning, social and identity experiences, technology plays a central role on how childhood is experienced and children’s everyday lives take place. Moreover, a wide range of both possibilities and harms are foreseen from children’s enthusiastic adoption of digital media. From the digital generation to the death of childhood scenario, the rhetoric discourses of the ‘digital child’ feed popular imageries. A deep acquaintance with children’s practices and interpretations of digital experiences contributes, on one hand, to demystify this generational rhetoric (Buckingham, 2000) and, on the other, to include children’s points of view in research and policy agendas. Overall, the study adopted a social constructivist perspective, exploring both childhood and its relation to technology as relational processes that take shape in complex entanglements between social, technical and developmental aspects. Overcoming techno, bio and sociological determinisms, this analysis exposes the social and interactional circumstances in which childhood and technology exist and gain meaning, from a child-centered approach.

Alderson, P. (1995). Listening to children: Children, ethics and social research. Essex: Barnardos. Almeida, A. N., Alves, N. A., Delicado, A., & Carvalho, T. (2011). Children and digital diversity: From “unguided rookies” to “self-reliant cybernauts.” Childhood, 1–16. Bovill, M., & Livingstone, S. (2001). Bedroom culture and the privatization of media use. In S. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psichology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. Buckingham, D. (2000). After the death of childhood: Growing up in the age of electronic media. Cambridge: Polity Press. Buckingham, D. (2008c). Introducing identity. In D. Buckingham (Ed.), Youth, identity, and digital media (pp. 1–22). Cambridge: The MIT Press. Christensen, P., & James, A. (2000). Research with children: Perspectives and practices. London: Falmer Press. Davies, T., Bhullar, S., & Dowty, T. (2011). Rethinking responses to children and young people’s online lives. In EU Kids Online 2 Final Conference. London: EU Kids Online. Gallacher, L.-A., & Gallagher, M. (2008). Methodological immaturity in childhood research?: Thinking through `participatory methods´. Childhood, 15(4), 499–516. Ito, M., Baumer, S., Bittanti, M., Boyd, D., Cody, R., Herr-Stephenson, B., … Tripp, L. (2010). Hanging out, messing around, and geeking out: Kids living and learning with new media. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press. James, A., Jenks, C., & Prout, A. (1998). Theorizing childhood. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lievrouw, L. A., & Livingstone, S. (2006). Handbook of new media: Social shaping and social consequences. London: Sage. Livingstone, S. (2002). Young people and new media: Childhood and changing media environment. London: Sage. Livingstone, S., & Haddon, L. (2009). Kids online: Opportunities and risks for children. Bristol: The Policy Press. Livingstone, S., Haddon, L., & Gorzig, A. (2012). Children, risk and safety online: Research and policy challenges in comparative perspective. Bristol: The Policy Press. Postman, N. (1994). The disappearance of childhood. New York: Vintage Books. Prout, A. (2005). The future of childhood: Towards the interdisciplinary study of children. London: Routledge. Prout, A. (2011). Taking a step away from modernity: Reconsidering the new sociology of childhood. Childhood: A Global Journal of Child Research, 1(1). Tapscott, D. (1999). Growing up digital: The rise of the net generation. New York: McGraw-Hill. Tisdall, E. K. M., & Punch, S. (2012). Not so “ new ”? Looking critically at childhood studies. Children’s Geographies, 10(3), 37–41.