TY - JOUR AU - O’Neill, Brian PY - 2015/11/01 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Ecological perspectives and children’s use of the Internet: exploring micro to macro level analysis JF - Eesti Haridusteaduste Ajakiri. Estonian Journal of Education JA - EHA VL - 3 IS - 2 SE - Articles DO - 10.12697/eha.2015.3.2.02b UR - https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/EHA/article/view/eha.2015.3.2.02b SP - 32-53 AB - <p>Age-old debates on children’s encounters with media technologies reveal a long,&nbsp;fractured and contentious tradition within communication and media studies.&nbsp;Despite the fact there have been studies of effects of media use by children since&nbsp;the earliest days of broadcasting, the subject remains under-theorised, poorly&nbsp;represented in the literature and not widely understood in media policy debates.&nbsp;Old debates have intensified in relation to the study of children and the internet.&nbsp;Pitted between alarmist accounts of risks, excessive use and harmful effects on the one hand and the many accounts about "digital natives" and the transformational&nbsp;power of technology is the empirical project – represented by EU Kids Online&nbsp;among others – of building an evidence base for understanding the evolving environment&nbsp;for youth online engagement. In this paper, I situate that body of work&nbsp;in an ecological context, both in the sense of the Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological&nbsp;model that has been so important in the new sociology of childhood, as well as in&nbsp;the more loosely defined theoretical approach of media ecology. The latter tradition,&nbsp;associated primarily with McLuhan and later Postman, frames the media&nbsp;environment as a complex interplay between technology and society in which&nbsp;modes of communication and mediated interaction fundamentally shape human&nbsp;behaviour and social life. These strands offer the basis for framing some of the&nbsp;issues of evidence-based policymaking relating to internet governance, regulation&nbsp;and youth protection online.</p> ER -