Young Children (0-8) and Digital Technology

A qualitative exploratory study across seven countries. This report presents the results of a pilot qualitative study aiming at exploring young children and their families’ experiences with digital technologies such as smartphones, tablets, computers, and games. The study is pioneering in Europe. Its goal was double: testing a new methodology while collecting information on how children between 0 to 8 years old engage with (online) technologies, on how parents mediate their use, and to identify potential benefits and risks associated with their (online) interactions with new technologies. Parents and children provided very insightful information about their use of the technologies. This study touched seventy families and was simultaneously implemented in six European countries (Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Italy, UK) and Russia, and performed by researchers from selected universities. The environment of this research was limited to the home and family context. It focused on interviewing children that consume digital technology at least once a week, aged between 6 and 7 (just entering in September 2014 in 2nd grade of primary school and possibly with at least one younger sibling) and their family (at least one parent).