Domesticating Smartphone in Distance: Family Politics and Technological Governance in Chinese Left-Behind Children's Families During COVID-19

Abstract

The societal anxiety over children's smartphone addiction during the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted parents of left-behind children in China to adopt various strategies for remotely domesticating smartphones. This paper advances domestication theory and presents findings from a year-long study of 19 left-behind families from two rural schools in China. The study reveals how smartphone governance has reshaped the spatial order of the household, redefined family roles, and transformed family structures. By using webcams to monitor children's bodies and domestic spaces, assigning stricter and more responsible moral identities to grandparents, and building peer-based family support networks, these families have integrated smartphones as tools of productivity into their everyday life. The research further illustrates how the pandemic has brought modern state governance into the home, profoundly altering traditional models of child-rearing in Chinese families.