DigiGen - working paper series No.2 - literature review

"This deliverable consists of two main parts. First, we provide a literature review on the four main areas within DigiGen: family life, leisure time, education and civic participation. The review demonstrates the existing diversity of research on the relationship between digital technology and individual family members as well as the family system. This review also examines parental involvement and the negotiations in which parents and children are engaged in order to arrange the ways and the amount of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) use during children’s leisure time, the risk areas and the most common digital practices. Furthermore, it contains the current state of research regarding ICT in/and education while considering the availability of ICT in schools, the actual use of ICT in schools, the computer and information literacy competencies of students and teachers’ experiences with ICT, among other aspects. Finally, we also refer to civic participation and political engagement of young people with the aim to understand the context within which the political behaviour of young people is manifested online and to assess the extent to which it affects offline political practices. Second, we provide an overview of existing databases in relation to ICT and the extent to which such data allows the analysis of at-risk groups among children and youth. The section is divided into two main parts by which the first one reviews existing databases at the international level and the second one covers national databases in the Consortium countries. Each database is presented in a table that contains general information about the database and about the ICT indicators that contains, whether certain at-risk groups can be identified in that given database and our subjective evaluation regarding the strengths and weaknesses of each database. When possible, we also comment on the potential improvement of the database for future analyses. Finally, the last section contains some concluding remarks that intend to summarize the information provided as well as the main strengths and weaknesses of current data for empirical research. Most importantly, we also identify the information lacking in current surveys and provide concrete recommendations for the improvement of the existing data that could enrich future analyses." (Ayllón et al., 2021, 1)

"The pages above provide a review of the literature on four main research areas regarding technology and children: family life, leisure time, education and civic participation. There is plenty of literature available on specific aspects of digital technology and its effect on family life. In contrast, some topics have not yet been sufficiently explored or seem somewhat outdated and can thus only be supported by older studies. The existing evidence suggests that the ways families engage with digital technologies are complex, and so are its consequences. On the one hand, digital technologies offer unique opportunities. ICT support the reproduction of family (doing family), assist the creation and maintenance of new and existing relationships, help children in the development of their identity and skills." (Ayllón 2021, 19)