2025/02/23 by Leo Röhlke · 2 voices
Social Sciences · #Child Development and Digital Technology #Impact of Technology on Adolescents #Social Media and Politics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/17482798.2025.2464841
openalex publication_date 2025/02/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
For decades, higher parental socioeconomic status (SES) has been linked to less screen time among children. However, the spread of mobile devices and digital learning tools may be altering the relationship between parental SES and children’s technology use, as parents reassess the potentials of children’s use of ICT (information and communication technologies) for acquiring skills and knowledge. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural reproduction, this study examines how parental SES relates to ICT use in middle childhood (ages 7–10). By applying latent class analysis to parental survey data from Switzerland (n = 2,490), four distinct ICT use types were identified: ‘heavy users’, ‘moderate entertainment users’, ‘educational explorers’, and ‘non-users’. Higher parental SES was associated with both limited (non-users) and education-centered ICT use (educational explorers), while lower SES was linked to more intensive, entertainment-oriented use (heavy users). The findings underscore how socioeconomic disparities extend beyond children’s screen time to include qualitative differences in ICT use. Among higher-SES families, a divide emerges between those limiting ICT use and ICT-resourceful families leveraging technology to transmit cultural capital, reflecting traditional and evolving class-specific attitudes towards ICT. The typological approach uncovered the heterogeneity of parental responses to the ambiguities of ICT across the socioeconomic spectrum.