Digital Citizenship : Growing up with Social Media

Abstract: Children today grow up with a plurality of technological opportunities. In the last ten years the digital development has enable multiple possibilities to participate in a so called ‘digitally mediated society’. Ever since the discussions do not stop, in what way do children learn a responsible use of digital media. How do children develop to Digital Citizens in the future? For the investigation of the question an empirical study, inspired by living fieldwork and the concept of media repertoires, was conducted. The theoretical identified stages of Digital Citizenship – access, use, understanding and creation – are taken as milestones for the development of children to Digital Citizens. Different forms of participation and the socialization process into digital media were studied in four families in order to identify different ways of education. From the results it seems that children in the families with the use of digital media as addition to traditional education, have - by the current view - better requirements to develop to Digital Citizens. The children are strongly limited in their range of digital content, what leads to a better understanding of consequences in their digital actions than in the case of children who live in families where digital media have replaced traditional forms and its use is much less restricted. The early reach of the stage of understanding appears as a benefit in the development of Digital Citizenship in a society where even many adults have not passed the stage of use and consume.