Heterotopic spaces of childhood

The rapid pace of technological change sweeps across the world of children changing current concepts of how childhood should be defined. Contentions that childhood is disappearing proliferate as some childhood theorists suggest that children's increasing exposure to previously withheld information and knowledge erases the boundaries which formerly separated childhood from adulthood. While acknowledging that unprecedented access to information may have changed the experience of childhood, it might be argued that the social artifact of childhood continues to exist. Moreover messages and ideas within the spaces of technology and new media are experienced and interpreted uniquely by children and therefore examining these experiences offers insight into the growing media niche which children occupy. My project examines the ways in which technology and new media can influence and even create the spaces of boyhood interaction. As media generated notions of public space as dangerous space lead to increasing privatization of space, virtual space becomes an alternative space for childhood play and social interaction. The methodology upon which my research is based is an ongoing two-year ethnographic study of a group of boys who play video games. Using participant observation and interviews, the ways in which the virtual space of the game might serve to shape the social interaction between the boys are explore