Engl. transl.: Medialized play practice in children's everyday lives: What does it mean to be 'digital native'?

Today's children have never known a life without digital media, technological toys, media stories and access to the Internet. Therefore, in today's medialized society, they move completely without drawing boundaries between digital and analog, between offline and online friendships and between computer games and 'real play'. They are digital natives, in other words. Their approach to media and technology is therefore fundamentally different from that of most adults, giving rise to wonder, frustration and misunderstandings when adults transfer their norms and understandings to children's practices based on precisely the boundaries between digital and ‘real life’. Through two empirical, practical examples, the purpose of this article is to explain the importance of media and technology in children's everyday lives, seen from the children's point of view and with a play culture starting point. Theoretically, the starting point is medialisation theory (Hjarvard, 2008, Lundby, 2009) and a practice-theoretical approach (Frykman & Gilje, 2003, Reckwitz, 2002) in relation to describing concrete, empirical play situations as they unfold with and without technology.

A discussion of the term 'digital native' on the basis of an empirical study