Young Children’s Touchscreen Media Habitus

Abstract

The increasing prevalence of touchscreen and mobile devices in homes has brought computing and the internet into the lives of toddlers and babies. Not only are such devices mobile and liable to enter toddlers’ reach, but their natural user interfaces provide avenues for gestural manipulation and navigation. Drawing from ongoing qualitative research with families and children aged from 0 to 5 in their domestic media settings in Melbourne, Australia, this paper reports on young children’s embodiment and enculturation of dispositions towards touchscreen media by developing the concept of a touchscreen or haptic media ‘habitus’.