Constructing the Child Computer User: From public policy to private practices

Universal access to the 'new capital' of information and knowledge via Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) has become a central goal of education reform under the New Labour Government. Public policy and media discourses, however, currently construct young children in a paradoxical relationship with new technologies, as both at the vanguard of the digital revolution 'effortlessly grasping the tools' of the new technologies, and at the rear, requiring educational policy interventions to ensure their acquisition of 'key skills' in ICT. While this meta-level discourse in policy statements, television coverage and advertising permeates reporting of young people's use of computers, however, both children and their parents are negotiating competing definitions of the function and uses of these new technologies in the home. Drawing on data gathered from 16 case-study families over a 12-month period, this paper therefore explores the subject positions constructed for young people by these discourses, the ways in which educational policy-makers are beginning to appeal to young people as consumers of digital technologies, and the responses of young people and their parents to these often conflicting images of 'the child computer user'.