“We Were Beaten Down”: Parents’ Perspectives on Benefit and Risks of Children’s Digital Media Use

Headshot of Denise Agosto.

Denise Agosto, PhD

Drexel University

Presentation by Denise Agosto

Seminar Date: March 8, 2022

The potential benefits and risks of children’s use of digital media have long been an active topic of discussion in both the popular media and in the research literature. The risk narrative has been especially prevalent in popular media discourse, often couching young people’s digital information practices in terms of “technopanics”—adult perceptions of young people’s use of digital media as fundamentally negative.

This talk will examine parental framing of children’s use of digital media with a focus on risk and benefit narratives. It will draw on qualitative data gathered from U.S. parents and other adult caregivers to argue that technopanic discourse has become ingrained in parental views of digital technologies and that scholars need to include caregivers’ perspectives when studying the contexts in which young people interact with digital media.

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, IMLS grant #LG-96-17-0220-17, Rebekah Willett (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Denise Agosto (Drexel University), and June Abbas (University of Oklahoma), Co-PI’s; Gabrielle Salib (Drexel University), Research Aassistant. See project details.

Denise E. Agosto is a professor in the College of Computing & Informatics at Drexel University, where she serves as director of the Master of Science in Information program. Her research investigates how young people use information and information technologies, and the role of social context in shaping youths’ multifaceted information practices. In recognition of the impact of Agosto’s work on the human information behavior research community, she was inducted into the Association for Information Science & Technology’s ASIS&T SIG-USE Academy of Fellows in 2018.

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Tuesday, March 8, 2022 at 12 p.m.
555 Baldy Hall
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