‘The computer is not for you to be looking around, it is for schoolwork’: Challenges for digital inclusion as Latino immigrant families negotiate children’s access to the internet

While studies have addressed the role of the internet in the family, the perspectives of Latino immigrant families are largely missing from the research. This article draws primarily on interview data with first-generation Latino immigrant families living in urban Los Angeles to analyze how parents and their middle school-aged children negotiate access to and use of the internet. Parents in the study were torn between a belief in the educational importance of the internet and a strong sense of anxiety about online risks. Their parenting strategies reflected these anxieties and inadvertently contributed to limiting children’s online opportunities. Outside of school, young people only had periodic access to the internet, which was used primarily for doing homework. While young people also found ways to pursue their own interests and motivations online, they had limited opportunities for more open-ended exploration and self-directed learning.

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