title: Socialisation Eco-systems of Child Technology Adoption: Digital Exclusion and Digital Elites
Creators: name: Reeves-Morris, S
Publisher: name: Liverpool John Moores University
Year: 2024

description: The COVID-19 pandemic powerfully impacted consumers overall reliance on various communication technologies (Cruz-Cárdenas, et al., 2021). Various technologies emerged during that period as crucial educational tools (i.e., during school closures); to enable remote working; to access health services and care; to order food and other essential supplies, and as the main communication tool for families and other important groups during lockdown periods (Sheth, 2020; Ofcom, 2020). This unique cultural epoch highlighted the severity of digital disparities, and this was particularly intensified for young children who were denied face to face school and peer group socialisation; instead becoming reliant on their parents and teachers to help build a very necessary digital citizenship (Mossberger, et al., 2008). In general, the way that children are socialised into digital citizenship is of key interest to policymakers (Online Safety Bill, UK Parliament, 2022); Education Technology policies (DfE, 2019b); and academics regarding for example, the exploration of relationships consumers form to devices (Melumad &amp; Pham, 2020) and the implication of digital disparities for child consumers in the digital age (Ólafsson &amp; Mascheroni, 2015). This general set of concerns, has however, become an intensified set of concerns due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic (Bozkurt, et al., 2020).

This study draws on data collected both prior to and during the COVID-19 lockdown to explore the impact of the pandemic on child technology socialisation. Prior to the pandemic, data collection consisted of explorative multi-method research for two key socialisation agents of the child consumer: teachers (Shin &amp; Lwin, 2016), using focus groups and parents/guardians (Cotte &amp; Wood, 2004) through surveys as well as interactive focus groups with young children. During the pandemic, alternative methods of data collection were employed using online forums for surveys and online interviews for the teachers and parents/guardians. Child socialisation, defined as ‘processes by which young people acquire skills, knowledge and attitudes relevant to their functioning as consumers in the marketplace’ (Ward, 1974, p. 2). Although accepted as a process involving family, peers, mass media, teachers and the wider community (Lawlor &amp; Prothero, 2011); socialisation has tended to be conceptualized in the consumer research literature as predominantly parental, and peer (John, 1999; Hunter-Jones, 2014). Although some research has examined peer and sibling effects (Kerrane et al., 2015). This thesis extends the extant literature to develop a more holistic model of this process, encompassing policymakers, schools and arents/families, by exploring the complexity of interactions between these environments. It concludes that the manner in which children are socialised toward digital citizenship is highly complex and the development of the child technology socialisation ecosystem helps to better understand this complexity. The findings explore the role of the family, school and policy with peer to peer socialisation changing in importance and kind due to the pandemic. In the school environment, the impact that differential familial socialisation had on educational outcomes was an important theme, in addition to this, the school culture toward the use of enabling technology (ET), the teacher’s personal consumption of technology, their views and experience of child ET use and their perceived role, emerges as a further influential layer of the child consumers ET socialisation eco-system. Recommendations include the need to consider further interventions to lessen digital inequality for the child consumer.