Abstract

In this ethnographic study of family life, intergenerational video and computer game activities were videotaped and analysed. Both children and adults invoked the notion of a digital divide, i.e. a generation gap between those who master and do not master digital technology. It is argued that the digital divide was exploited by the children to control the game activities. Conversely, parents and grandparents positioned themselves as less knowledgeable, drawing on a displayed divide as a rhetorical resource for gaining access to playtime with the children. In these intergenerational encounters, the digital divide was thus an interactional resource rather than a problem. (Contains 14 notes.)

Citation

Aarsand, P.A. (2007). Computer and Video Games in Family Life: The Digital Divide as a Resource in Intergenerational Interactions. Childhood: A Global Journal of Child Research, 14(2), 235-256. Retrieved August 11, 2022 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/76498/.

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Keywords

• Access to Computers
• Age Differences
• computer literacy
• computers
• Digital Divide
• Discourse Analysis
• ethnography
• Family (Sociological Unit)
• Family Life
• Foreign Countries
• games
• information technology
• interaction
• Knowledge Level
• phenomenology
• Role of Education
• Social Environment
• video games
• Videotape Recordings