Digital childhood, risks and opportunities: Why is it so important to listen to children?

This article explores how children construct their own cultures through the use of digital technologies and, based on these specific sociocultural codes, how they reflect and position themselves with respect to risk and opportunity discourses. It addresses the crucial challenge of listening to children’s voices and understanding their interests and needs, with regard to the apparent problems and benefits associated with digital practices. This approach exposes the limits and paradoxes these discourses may hold for children, thus highlighting the need for them to be actively involved in research and decision-making. In contrast to the narrow focus on essentialist, sensationalist and adult-driven perspectives, this work offers a broader and more contextualised approach. This analysis is based on an ethnographic study with fourteen girls and eight boys. They were aged between nine and fourteen years and were engaged in three different settings: after-school centres, family homes and digital inclusion centres. Data were submitted to thematic analysis