Theorising digital practices

Historically, research about young children and digital technologies is informed by technological determinist thinking seeking to understand the impact of technologies on young children. As digital society is increasingly understood to interface social practices with technologies, questions of impact become harder to sustain theoretically. In this chapter, practice theory and critical constructivism are identified and explained leading to a cultural study of technologies. Practices are interpreted as what people do, say and how they relate to material and non-material affordances in their world as motivated by what they want to do or achieve. Critical constructivism explains how design and use values are mediated by people in situ so that technologies are never value-neutral but always in a state of social formation over time. Directing attention to the practices that comprise how people engage with technologies via their social formation comprises a cultural study of technologies.