2021/10/25 by Devina Sarwatay, Usha Raman · 2 voices · 4 citations
Social Sciences · Computer Science · #Child Development and Digital Technology #ICT in Developing Communities #Social Media and Politics
paper · doi:10.1080/1369118x.2021.1988129
openalex publication_date 2021/10/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/16
Young people’s lives are inextricably tied in with the digital, whether it is for education, engagement, leisure, or work. Studies from the Global North have examined children and social media from several perspectives, with discourse now veering towards a rights-based approach to foreground young people’s voices in a digital and social media world, something that is missing in countries like India. This paper drew on deep interactions with young people from a large Indian city to gain preliminary insights into social media practices and modes of engagement with particular reference to management of access, privacy, safety, and negotiating challenges or problem solving. Our study suggests that conversations about digital platforms, particularly social media spaces, in relation to children’s everyday life practices need to begin early, at the point when children begin interacting with these technologies. Critical digital literacy must recognize the agency of young people, their naturalized interactions with the digital world, as well as the complexities of family and school life that moderate such interactions. These contextual nuances become significant when framing regulatory policies, parental advisories and critical digital literacy and media education programs. This article adds to the slowly growing literature from the Global South that enhances and diversifies our understanding of how the ‘born digital’ generation lives with/in social media.