Restricted accessOtherFirst published online 2011-6
‘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.
Benítez J. ( 2006) Transnational dimensions of the digital divide among Salvadoran immigrants in the Washington DC metropolitan area. Global Networks6(2): 181-99.
2.
boyd d (2007) Why youth (heart) social network sites: The role of networked publics in teenage social life . In: Buckingham D (ed.) Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 119-42.
3.
boyd d, Ellison N. (2007) Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-mediated Communication13(1), URL (consulted 12 July 2008): http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html
4.
Buckingham D. ( 2000) After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age of Electronic Media. Malden, MA: Blackwell .
5.
Clark LS ( 2005) The constant contact generation: Exploring teen friendship networks online. In: Mazzarella SR (ed.) Girl Wide Web. New York: Peter Lang , 203-22.
6.
Clark LS, Demont-Heinrich C. and Webber SA ( 2004) Ethnographic interviews on the digital divide. New Media & Society6(4): 529-47.
7.
Cornelius WA ( 2006) Impacts of border enforcement on unauthorizedMexican migration to the United States, 26 September, URL (consulted 1 June 2008): http://borderbattles.ssrc.org/Cornelius/index.html
8.
Dijk J. ( 2005) The Deepening Divide: Inequality in the Information Society . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications .
9.
Eastin MS, Greenberg BS and Hofschire L. ( 2006) Parenting the internet. Journal of Communication56(3): 486-504.
10.
Facer K., Furlong J., Furlong R. and Sutherland R. ( 2003) Screenplay: Children and Computing in the Home. New York: Routledge.
11.
Fox S., Livingston G. ( 2007) Latinos Online. Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center and Pew Internet and American Life Project, March. URL (consulted 17 June 2008): http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/204/report_display.asp
12.
Horst H., Herr-Stephenson R. and Robinson L. ( 2009) Media ecologies. In: Ito M, Baumer S, Bittanti M, boyd d, Cody R, Herr-Stephenson R et al. Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
13.
Hoover SM, Alters DF and Clark LS ( 2003) Media, Home, and Family. New York: Routledge.
14.
Ito M., Baumer S., Bittanti M., boyd d, Cody R., Herr-Stephenson R., et al. ( 2009) Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
15.
Jenkins H., Purushotma R., Clinton K., Weigel M. and Robinson A. ( 2006) Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Chicago, IL: The MacArthur Foundation. URL (consulted 17 June 2007): http://www.projectnml.org/files/working/NMLWhitePaper.pdf
16.
Lenhart A. ( 2005) Protecting Teens Online. Washington, DC: Pew Internet and American Life Project, March. URL (consulted 15 July 2008): http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/152/report_display.asp
17.
Lenhart A., Madden M. ( 2007) Teens, Privacy, and Online Social Networks. Washington, DC: Pew Internet and American Life Project , April. URL (consulted 28 July 2008): http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/211/report_display.asp
18.
Lenhart A., Madden M., Macgill A. and Smith A. ( 2007) Teens and Social Media. Washington, DC, Pew Internet and American Life Project, December. URL (consulted 17 June 2008): http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/230/report_display.asp
19.
Lenhart A., Arafeh S., Smith A. and Macgill A. ( 2008) Writing, Technology and Teens. Washington, DC: Pew Internet and American Life Project, April. URL (consulted 12 July 2008): http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/247/report_display.asp
20.
Lenhart A., Purcell K., Smith A. and Zickuhr K. ( 2010) Social Media and Young Adults. Washington, DC: Pew Internet and American Life Project, February. URL (consulted 1 April 2010): http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspx
21.
Leonardi PM ( 2003) Problematizing ‘new media’: culturally based perceptions of cell phones, computers, and the internet among United States Latinos. Critical Studies in Media Communication20(2): 160-79.
22.
Livingstone S. ( 2008) Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: Teenagers’ use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression. New Media and Society10(3): 393-411.
23.
Livingstone S., Bober M. ( 2006) Regulating the internet at home: Contrasting the perspectives of children and parents. In: Buckingham D , Willett R (eds) Digital Generations: Children, Young People and New Media, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 93-113.
24.
Livingstone S., Helsper EJ ( 2007) Gradations in digital inclusion: Children, young people and the digital divide. New Media and Society9(4): 671-96.
25.
Macgill A. ( 2007) Parent and Teen Internet Use. Washington, DC: Pew Internet and American Life Project, October. URL (consulted 17 June 2008): http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/225/report_display.asp
26.
McMillan DC ( 2005) Teen crossings: Emerging cyberpublics in India. In: Mazzarella SR (ed.) Girl Wide Web. New York: Peter Lang, 161-78.
27.
Miller D., Slater D. ( 2000) The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach. Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers.
28.
Montgomery KC ( 2007) Generation Digital. Politics, Commerce and Childhood in the Age of the Internet. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
29.
Perkel D. ( 2008) Copy and paste literacy? Literacy practices in the production of a MySpace profile. In: Drotner K, Jensen H and Schroeder K (eds) Informal Learning and Digital Media: Constructions, Contexts, Consequences. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 203-24.
30.
Rainie L. ( 2010) Internet, Broadband, and Cell Phone Statistics. Washington, DC: Pew Internet and American Life Project , January. URL (consulted 1 April 2010): http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Internet-broadband-and-cell-phone-statistics.aspx
31.
Rojas V., Straubhaar J., Spence J., Roychowdhury D., Okur O., Pinon J. and Fuentes-Bautista M. (forthcoming) Communities, cultural capital and digital inclusion: Ten years of tracking techno-dispositions. In: Straubhaar J (ed.) Austin Technopolis. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
32.
Seiter E. ( 2005) The Internet Playground: Children’s Access, Entertainment, and Mis-education. New York: Peter Lang.
33.
Seiter E. ( 2008) Practicing at home: Computers, pianos, and cultural capital . In: McPherson T (ed.) Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 27-52.
34.
Tripp L., Herr-Stephenson R. ( 2009) Making access meaningful: Latino young people using digital media at home and at school. Journal of Computer-mediated Communication14(4): 1190-1207.
35.
Turow J., Kavanaugh AL ( 2003) Introduction. In: Turow J, Kavanaugh AL (eds) The Wired Homestead: An MIT Press Sourcebook on the Internet and the Family . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1-19.
36.
Valentine G., Holloway SL ( 2001) On-line dangers? Geographies of parents’ fears for children’s safety in cyberspace. Professional Geographer53(1): 71-83.
37.
Vásquez O. ( 2003) La Clase Mágica: Imagining Optimal Possibilities in a Bilingual Community of Learners. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.
38.
Wang R., Bianchi S. and Raley S. ( 2005) Teenagers’ internet use and family rules: A research note. Journal of Marriage and Family67(5): 1249-58.
39.
Warschauer M. ( 2003) Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
40.
Watkins SC ( 2009) The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
