What Are Kids Doing Online? Evidence From Studies on Adolescents’ Digital Practices

Background. The use of digital devices and the Internet is an integral feature of modern everyday life, making children’s developmental situation “digitalized”. There are not many papers on the specifics, types and content of digital practices of schoolchildren, and questions about what and why children do online are often replaced by questions about how this “something” is related to different characteristics of well-being or cognitive and personality traits.

Objective. To review recent studies that focus on the practices of schoolchildren in different digital environments and to analyze them in terms of both results and approaches.

Methods. Review of the literature on the varieties of digital practices of modern-day schoolchildren. Articles on schoolchildren’ digital and online practices were selected from Scopus database using publication date range (2016 — 2021) and keywords, such as “digital/online behaviour/practices”, “schoolchildren/adolescents” etc. The initial selection was complemented by articles from key psychology and education journals in Russian from the same time span and also by relevant articles cited in the selected literature.

Results. When considering the ratio of online and offline activities in the life of modern schoolchildren, two main ideas stand out: combining online and offline environments into a single hybrid environment, or considering them as complementary and having their own specifics. The idea of hybridity changes the formulation of the question of the well-being of schoolchildren and the possibility of it being negatively impacted by digital technologies: constant involvement in online contexts ceases to be pathologized and can be viewed as primarily associated with “offline needs” and satisfying them in new ways. Methods for characterizing digital practices of schoolchildren are described: based on the kinds of behavior, the type of interaction with the content, the goals of interaction, as well as various ways of managing digital behavior on the part of the school and parents, which can become the basis for the emergence of new forms of digital inequality. Research shows that online environments are well suited to meet the age-related needs of adolescents.

Conclusion. Research in recent years has allowed to rethink a number of questions and to demonstrate the irrelevance of some attitudes regarding the use of digital technologies by children, which emphasizes the importance of conducting empirical research aimed at revealing the meaning and content of digital practices, and not limited to quantitative measurements.

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