“The Covid pandemic of the early 2020s posed unprecedented challenges for family life, not least in relation to the role of screen media. Children, Media, and Pandemic Parenting presents in- depth collaborative research, conducted across some very diverse international settings, looking at how parents and children learned to cope with the dilemmas and anxieties that arose. In the process, it points to the need to move beyond received wisdom – for example about screen time – and to rethink our understanding of the complexities of contemporary parenting much more broadly. In a world where childhood is now ‘digital by default’, this is precisely the kind of research we need.” David Buckingham, Emeritus Professor, Loughborough University, UK “Centering on the voices, perspectives, and ideological commitments of parents in seven countries, ‘Children, Media, and Pandemic Parenting: Family Life in Uncertain Times’ offers culturally and politically nuanced insights into media practices, discourses and norms in diverse homes that make up children’s living, playing, and learning at the height of the pan- demic. This book is a must to all those who want to understand home media ecologies through the lenses of parenting, as well as children’s agency and rights, honoring differences, and counter- stories of what it means to be a parent and a child in an ever- evolving mediatized and turbulent world.” Kristiina Kumpulainen, Professor, University of British Columbia, Canada “At a time when parents are challenged by the omnipresence of media in their children’s lives, the analysis of the experiences of families in seven different countries during the pandemic is highly insightful and provocative. The inter- disciplinary and multi- cultural perspective offered in this unique collection inspires us to ask new questions, consider what seems to be shared across the globe and what is culturally specific, and how our approaches to the media- technologies in our lives are shaped by our contexts and circumstances. Parents, educators, scholars of media, professionals, and policymakers will find within these pages new understandings of what parenting and schooling with media are or could be.” Dafna Lemish, Professor, Journalism and Media Studies, Rutgers University, USA “Before the pandemic, society worried that all children wanted was more screen time. But as the pandemic interrupted children’s access to the ‘real world’, it became clear that the opposite was the case. This closely evidenced book demonstrates parents’ myriad and nuanced responses to this crisis moment for families and provides hope for new ways ahead.” Sonia Livingstone, Professor, London School of Economics, UK, author of Parenting for a Digital Future “This is an exciting and highly informative book that offers a range of fas- cinating insights into families’ experiences with digital media during the pan- demic. The authors provide a wealth of information about digital parenting in an international context, and challenge existing and limiting assumptions about issues such as digital surveillance, screen time and screen- mediated schooling. This is an impressive volume that engages with innovate analytical frameworks and fascinating datasets in an insightful and nuanced manner, bringing important new theoretical and methodological insights that can inform researchers, parents and policymakers alike.” Jackie Marsh, Emeritus Professor, University of Sheffield, UK “This is an important and insightful book which explores pedagogical, social, and cultural practices with digital media in families around the world during the pandemic. Willett and Zhao have assembled an international set of contributions which carefully resist the prevalent and overly simplistic discourses that emerged during the global pandemic on ‘screen time’ and ‘learning loss’. Instead, the contributors provide methodologically innovative and nuanced accounts of family life and ‘the digital’ in pandemic times in a range of locations worldwide. In his foreword, Sefton- Green is right to point out how the book demonstrates the value of international comparative work in the field. In their conclusion, Willett and Zhao call for future research which builds on these multi- layered findings which is based on observation rather than surveillance, is respectful of children’s rights, and is designed with curiosity and attention to the detail of families’ lived experience. This book deserves the widest possible readership, not only drawn from researchers and policymakers but also from families negotiating the complexities of ‘the digital’. They will all benefit greatly from this book’s informed and considered response to uncertain times which has important implications for our understanding of digital life well beyond the pandemic and into whatever the future holds.” John Potter, Professor, UCL Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education, University College London, UK Children, Media, and Pandemic Parenting This book examines changes in families’ rules and routines connected with media during the pandemic and shifts in parents’ understanding of children’s media use. Drawing on interviews with 130 parents at the height of the COVID- 19 pandemic, the book explores specific cultural contexts across seven coun- tries: Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, South Korea, United Kingdom, and United States. Readers will gain an understanding of family media practices during the pandemic and how they were influenced by contextual factors such as the pandemic restrictions, family relationships and situations, socioeconomic statuses, cultural norms and values, and sociotechnical visions, among others. Further, encounter with theoretical framings will pro- vide innovative ways to understand what it means for children, parents, and families to live in the digital age. This timely volume will offer key insights to researchers and graduate students studying in a variety of disciplines, including media and cultural studies, communication arts, education, childhood studies, and family studies. Rebekah Willett is Professor in the Information School at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, USA. She conducts research on children’s media cultures, focusing on issues of play, literacy, identity, and learning. Her publications include work on makerspaces, playground games, amateur cam- corder cultures, online gaming, and family media practices. Xinyu Zhao is Research Fellow (Digital Childhoods) at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, Deakin University, Australia. His work focuses on everyday digital cultures and practices in migration contexts. He is currently researching the political economy of digital childhoods and cultural diversity in contemporary digital parenting. Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture 57 Queer Reflections on AI Uncertain Intelligences Michael Klipphahn- Karge, Ann- Kathrin Koster & Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss 58 Pandemics in the Age of Social Media Information and Misinformation in Developing Nations Edited by Vikas Kumar and Mohit Rewari 59 The Chinese Internet: Political Economy and Digital Discourse Yuqi Na 60 Mapping Lies in the Global Media Sphere Tirşe Filibeli & Melis Öneren Özbek 61 Digital Media as Ambient Therapy The Ecological Self between Resonance and Alienation Francis Russell 62 The Class and Gender Politics of Chinese Online Discourse Ambivalence, Sociopolitical Tensions and Co- option Yanning Huang 63 Virtual Influencers Identity and Digitality in the Age of Multiple Realities Esperanza Miyake 64 Children, Media, and Pandemic Parenting Family Life in Uncertain Times Edited by Rebekah Willett and Xinyu Zhao Children, Media, and Pandemic Parenting Family Life in Uncertain Times Edited by Rebekah Willett and Xinyu Zhao First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Rebekah Willett and Xinyu Zhao; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Rebekah Willett and Xinyu Zhao to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylor fran cis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution- Non Commercial- No Derivatives (CC- BY- NC- ND) 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Willett, Rebekah, editor. | Zhao, Xinyu editor. Title: Children, media, and pandemic parenting : family life in uncertain times / edited by Rebekah Willett, Xinyu Zhao. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2025. | Series: Routledge studies in new media and cyberculture | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2024012787 (print) | LCCN 2024012788 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032602035 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032602059 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003458074 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Mass media and children. | Internet and children. | Parenting. | Families. | COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020–Social aspects. Classification: LCC HQ784.M3 C4554 2025 (print) | LCC HQ784.M3 (ebook) | DDC 302.23083–dc23/eng/20240430 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024012787 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024012788 ISBN: 978- 1- 032- 60203- 5 (hbk) ISBN: 978- 1- 032- 60205- 9 (pbk) ISBN: 978- 1- 003- 45807- 4 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/ 9781003458074 Typeset in Sabon by Newgen Publishing UK http://www.taylorfrancis.com http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003458074 Contents List of contributors ix Foreword: Learning from the pandemic xi JULIAN SEFTON- GREEN Acknowledgements xvii 1 Introduction: Families, screen media, and daily life during the pandemic 1 REBEKAH WILLETT 2 Space, time, and families’ relational media practices: China and Canada 28 LINDSAY C. SHEPPARD, XINYU ZHAO, AND NATALIE COULTER 3 Temporalities and changing understandings of children’s use of media: Australia, China, and the United States 48 SARAH HEALY, REBEKAH WILLETT, AND XINYU ZHAO 4 Schooling with and through technologies during the pandemic: South Korea and the UK 65 REBECCA COLES, HYEON- SEON JEONG, AND REBEKAH WILLETT 5 ‘Just doing stupid things’: Affective affinities for imagining children’s digital creativity 90 DIANA CAROLINA GARCÍA GÓMEZ, SARAH HEALY, AND REBECCA COLES 6 Imaginaries of parental controls: The state, market, and families 114 XINYU ZHAO, MAUREEN MAUK, AND AMIE KIM viii Contents 7 Conclusion: Contributions, provocations, and calls to action 137 REBEKAH WILLETT, XINYU ZHAO, AND DIANA CAROLINA GARCÍA GÓMEZ Appendix 1: Summaries of COVID- 19 timelines 146 Appendix 2: Overviews of research studies in each country 162 Appendix 3: Information about research participants and their families 171 Appendix 4: Codebook for data analysis 195 Index 196 Contributors Rebecca Coles has been a researcher in the UK since completing her PhD under the supervision of Pat Thomson in 2014. She likes to work with archives, participant observation and in- depth and longitudinal interviewing and is interested in how people’s love of art, media and literature sits within their wider lives, structured by inequality and social change. Natalie Coulter is Associate Professor in Communication and Media Studies and Director of the Institute for Research on Digital Literacies (IRDL) at York University, Canada. Her work focuses on consumer, media cul- ture, and digital media. She is currently working on a project titled Kids and Digital Capitalism. She has published on topics such as tween girls, Canadian children’s media, scholarly research harassment, KidTech, and children’s digital cultures. Diana Carolina García Gómez is an assistant professor in the Childhood Studies Department at Bridgewater State University, USA. Her multidiscip- linary work centres children and youth political participation as a node for studying processes of collective memory and peacebuilding. Diana focuses on young people’s self- constructions and political identities approaching the Colombian post- accord context from the fields of childhood studies, memory studies, media studies, and political philosophy. She combines Latin- American scholarship, decolonial and postcolonial theories, and ethnographic methods. Sarah Healy is co- lead of SWISP Lab and a Melbourne Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculty of Education at The University of Melbourne, Australia. Best known for her contributions to the fields of critical affect studies, digital methods and the posthumanities, Sarah is currently ‘Hacking the Anthropocene’ with young people around the globe. Hyeon- Seon Jeong is Professor of Media Literacy at Gyeongin National University of Education’s Department of Korean Education and Digital Media Education M.Ed. program in South Korea. Her research focuses on x List of contributors children’s digital literacy practices, media education, critical literacy peda- gogy, teacher education, and digital parenting. Amie Kim is an independent researcher and serves as a digital media literacy consultant for various institutions in South Korea. Her research interests include young people’s media culture, digital citizenship, and children’s digital rights. Her recent studies include young people’s perceptions of online risks and child- led research on children’s digital rights. Maureen Mauk, based in the US, is Visiting Research Fellow at York University’s Institute for Research on Digital Literacies and is a Senior Standards & Practices Analyst at Sony Crunchyroll. Her research focuses on the intertwined relationship between parents, policy, and industry as it relates to television history and the current platformised media landscape. Lindsay C. Sheppard is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at York University, Canada. She is curious about girlhood, age, digital feminism, collective identity, and conceptualising agency. Using a fem- inist posthuman framework, Lindsay’s dissertation is exploring girls’ and young women’s feminism on Instagram. Rebekah Willett is Professor in the Information School at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, USA. She conducts research on children’s media cultures, focusing on issues of play, literacy, identity, and learning. Her publications include work on makerspaces, playground games, amateur camcorder cultures, online gaming, and family media practices. Xinyu Zhao is Research Fellow (Digital Childhoods) at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, Deakin University, Australia. His work focuses on everyday digital cultures and practices in migration contexts. He is currently researching the political economy of digital childhoods and cultural diversity in contemporary digital parenting. Foreword Learning from the pandemic Julian Sefton- Green Toward the end of her extraordinary and prescient history of the Spanish flu (1918– 21), Laura Spinney reflects on some of the long- term effects of that pandemic (Spinney, 2017). In the final section, she speculates that the pan- demic influenced (amongst others) the development of public health systems and the institutionalisation of modern medicine. She shows its impacts on beliefs in anti- science, modernism, the catastrophic ruptures in so many indigenous communities, racialised segregation, and the seeds of the Second World War II: virtually every aspect of the rest of the 20th century seems to have been touched and possibly even determined by that pandemic. Spinney explains how the pandemic even had an effect on the average height of post- pandemic children; it took nearly 50 years to return to the same growth pattern. On one level, it is clearly too early to reflect on the COVID- 19 pandemic, even if at the time, many scholars from many disciplines described the brutal first years of the pandemic as a kind of natural experiment. This book offers a very particular, and at times, brilliantly counter- intuitive analysis of its effects in one area: parents’ understandings of children’s use of digital technology in the home, especially as it was used for schooling during those lockdown years in 2020 and 2021. Even though this area of impact may not sound as important as some of the domains outlined by Spinney above, it actu- ally dominated many people’s direct experience of the pandemic. Indeed, accounts of its impact have made family technology use resonate in import- ance alongside other stories that define our collective memory of the pan- demic, including breakdowns in public health provision, the achievements of medical research, or even a shortage of toilet paper. As the pandemic progressed, the focus expanded from the immediate con- cern with the unknown effects of the virus itself and scientific ways to combat it, toward a concern with its broader social impact. On the one hand, there was increasing concern with economic effects and their consequences, and on the other, a concern with the well- being of populations caught in these straitened circumstances. In general, children had not spent as much time in the home and under the direct supervision of their parents and carers xii Foreword since the introduction of mass education in the 19th century. When Laura Spinney (2017) wrote of the world after the Spanish flu that ‘families were forced to recompose themselves’ (p. 228), she did not have in mind the stories recounted in this volume. We can read here of families moving screens around the different spaces in the home, of children and parents renegotiating their everyday roles, and of both children and parents being required to adopt different roles – as teachers, students – rather than just behaving as family members. Throughout this volume, we read about the different ways that schooling was reimagined and reorganised to take place online and under the immediate proxy supervision of adults in the family. There are other books to be written about the ways that the pandemic sedimented the platformisation of education (Williamson & Hogan, 2020). However, in many countries around the world, as this book shows, most schools attempted to offer a form of – for lack of better words – online learning. These attempts took an incredible variety of forms: from online classes to personalised catch- ups with teachers, to tyranny by worksheets, and the use of so- called personalised learning platforms offering activities, tests, as well as other forms of feedback. It is almost impossible to com- prehensively describe the broad range of children’s and families’ different living and learning contexts during the pandemic. These ranged from chil- dren in remote areas having to rely on one or two mobile phones in the community to access their schools’ educational resources, to all the children in a household having their own designated devices, hooked to high- speed broadband. Some parents purchased access to online services or paywalled learning platforms, and others were on hand both to supervise compliance and/ or acting as a teacher to support and direct their children’s learning. In many countries around the world, this whole process only served to highlight how much modern contemporary schooling echoed its earlier 19th- century function: to release women into the workplace and to offer examinations to manage children’s next stages into work or access to further or higher edu- cation. The absence of public examinations for older children, which would then allow them to progress to the next stages in their lives, only served to show the persistent importance of the credentialing function of school. In this book, the authors write of childhood now being ‘digital by default’, because the pandemic underscored the depth and breadth of digital tech- nology in everyday life. In some ways, the issues around schooling only served as a counterfactual to this insight, given the unequal, contingent, emergent, and still evolving nature of the digitalisation of school. Paradoxically, and for all the investment in digital infrastructures in schools, they may be one of the last institutions unable to act as a very satisfactory default. Interpersonal, relational, and of course teaching skills may not be so easily translatable into a wholly digital experience. What this book shows is that the idea of using digital technology in a discretionary fashion, as something families might have a choice over, has long gone. When this book talks about childhood being digital by default, it means that so many activities, interactions, relationships, Foreword xiii and experiences in the home – even of being a child itself – are now in some shape or form, digital. Yet, what the book explores is not so much the nature of those experiences from the child’s point of view, or even the political economy which dictates what devices, technologies, modes of access, and content are experienced by whom; but how the nature of digital childhood is mediated by parents as they bring up their children. The principles of choice, as opposed to the imposition of a default, go to the heart of some of the peculiar anxieties of parenting in what has been called the ‘risk society’ (Beck, 1992). Structural transformations in late modernity, and the breaking of traditional bonds and authorities – of now not bringing up your children under the watchful gaze of prior generations, and with a reduced sense of security in terms of the life children might lead with regards to their employment, their identities, their ‘place’ in society – have led to an increase in anxiety and uncertainty. The pandemic not only changed parents’ understandings of contemporary parenting responsibilities, but it also magnified and intensified any existing concerns parents might have had, including about digital technologies in their children’s lives, even prior to the pandemic’s traumatic impacts. The key issue prior to the pandemic in relation to the digitalisation of childhood and for those principles of parenting, which suggested parents could exert choice and make decisions, revolves around certain visions of ‘media effects’. That is to say, the ways in which people believe that con- sumption of the media or exposure to it exerts an influence. This influence has been characterised in a multitude of ways: from affecting the plasticity of neural pathways to other theories of influence on child development, to affecting emotional and psychological well- being, influencing ideas about gender, sexuality, and ideology. In effect, what it is to be a person and a member of any one particular society can be ascribed to some extent to the effect of media infiltrating the family home (Buckingham, 2000). If the digital is not a default, then parents and their modes of parenting stand between the child and all these theories about all these influences. However, the pandemic ensured that such elements of choice as might be assumed to exist, and such elements of control or mediation that parents might be presumed to exert, were completely non- existent. The idea of a default removes the concept of choice, and it removes the illusion that parents and their preferred mode of parenting can stand between these assumed effects and their children. It is this aspect of the crisis that this book explores in such detail, rigour, and analytical imagination. The book is significant both for what it finds out about how parents understood their children’s use of technology in the home during the pandemic, as well as its contribution to long- standing debates about parents’ understanding of children’s use of technology in the home more generally. In respect of this second dimension of how the crises catalysed by the pandemic transformed deeply held views and assumptions, we can perhaps see a version of Naomi Klein’s (2008) ‘shock doctrine’ at work as the pandemic exacerbated and brought to the xiv Foreword surface fundamental inequalities, while simultaneously creating possibilities for change and resistance (see Klein, 2020). From this perspective, the pan- demic acted as a heuristic – helping us face up to the ways our societies are organised, which are not made explicit in public discourse. At the same time, such reframings offer opportunities to reimagine our behaviours and our understandings of the world. As acknowledged by many contributors to this volume, ‘the pandemic, through its many challenges, also acted as a catalyst for rethinking and reimagining digital interactions’ (see Chapter 5). Here, I think the project described in this book makes three significant and original contributions to the discussion about how people understand the effects of the media. The first of these relates to the global comparative structure of the research project, and the way that its international scope addresses the pervasive idea that childhood is a universal global phenom- enon. The histories of childhood (Ariès, 1962) and especially children and the media (Cook, 2017; Sammond, 2005) have always been troubled by claims that childhood is a natural, common, and shared experience, lived by all children equally around the world. Historical scholarship has tried to excavate how childhoods are significantly contextual – relating to the norms and assumptions of the culture where they are experienced – and how different kinds of social norms have shaped our changing understandings of what child development entails. In this book, the common experience of lockdown and the denial of schooling – itself one of the few key global institutional cultural norms (Alexander, 2001; Lechner & Boli, 2005) – offers insight into this ongoing challenge in the social sciences. In this con- text, this book contributes to an understanding of how the homogenous nature of digital platforms – and its acceleration under the pandemic – might mean that experiences offered to children are indeed common, shared, and equivalent. This book offers an empirical investigation of this implication, by exploring whether this means that all experiences are the same – espe- cially through the filter of different parents from different social classes, with different aspirations for their children and their children’s futures – interpreting and giving meaning to these experiences with varied emphasis and weighting. The range of the countries studied in this project also hints at the second significant contribution this book makes, which is methodological. The attention to parental mediation and the discourses surrounding how fam- ilies interpret and make sense of their children’s use of media in the domestic context clearly challenges oversimplified and potentially invalid concepts like ‘screen time’, often referenced in in discussions about regulating children’s media consumption by limiting the number of minutes or hours spent con- suming media on screen technologies. The book constantly interrogates this common sense understanding of digital media use and the way that such a weak concept is taken to stand for so many different kinds of experiences. A key finding from the book is that under the stress of schooling at home, this key concept (Livingstone, 2021) became redundant in so many families’ Foreword xv vocabularies. The comparative nature of the project helped the authors of this book address this challenge from an original perspective, but there are more than simple international comparisons. The book learned from the pandemic that understanding the full impact of phenomena within the social world necessitates an approach that integrates multiple perspectives. As such, it is interested in a series of key analytic frameworks exploring the interrelationships between the dimensions of media use and parenting practices: encompassing studies of content, interpretative frameworks, contexts, practices, and social interactions. The book offers insight into future research paradigms as to how we should go about trying to under- stand the role of digital media in everyday life, beyond a simple summary of the extraordinary nature of daily life during the terrible years of the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns. Finally, the book makes an original contribution to the study of media use in the family through its willingness to entertain counter- intuitive and contrary positions, especially in relation to common sense expectations and cultural norms. A key finding from the book is that being forced to watch and interact with children’s everyday media use acted in some ways to edu- cate parents about what is going on for their children. Clearly acting like teachers changed the parameters of what was discussed in the family home, and both children and parents had to learn what the other found meaningful, engaging, purposive, and in its broadest sense, educational. The second half of this book in particular explores what parents learned from being in such close proximity to their children’s media use. Although this could not be a recommended or mandated principle of parenting, and it took the trauma of the pandemic to bring this about, the book’s willingness to engage with the unexpected, the counter- intuitive, and the downright contrary clearly helped its authors observe and learn about digital parenting (Livingstone & Blum- Ross, 2020). From this perspective, the pandemic clearly offered a kind of natural laboratory, but perhaps, it needed the international team assembled here to be able to use a natural divergence of perspectives to see what was actually going on. And indeed, the effort required in this kind of international project at scale cannot be underestimated. I do however think this book underwrites the value of research projects like this, because it seems to me that without the international comparative lens, questions of method, or universality, and of the counter- intuitive imagination might not have arisen. I have an email from Rebekah Willett in the early months of 2021, writing that she was aiming to keep the study simple, so that she and Maureen Mauk could get an article drafted in a few months, but then she wrote ‘but I am open to more exciting ideas’. I do not know whether she ever regretted this open invitation, but I think what the authors have collected here is not just a record of a hor- rible time in so many people’s lives but a genuinely original set of studies exploring the significance, meaning, and use of digital media in family life. I hope these conceptual and theoretical insights will be a lasting legacy of the xvi Foreword pandemic – and that a book like this can change the horizon of our everyday and common- sense understandings. References Alexander, R. (2001). Culture and Pedagogy. Blackwell Publishers. Ariès, P. (1962). Centuries of Childhood. Penguin. Beck, U. (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. SAGE Publications Ltd. Buckingham, D. (2000). After the Death of Childhood: Growing up in the Age of Electronic Media. Polity Press. Cook, D. T. (2017). Childhood as a moral project. Childhood, 24(1), 3– 6. Klein, N. (2008). The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Penguin Books. Klein, N. (2020, May 13). How big tech plans to profit from the pandemic. The Guardian. www.theg uard ian.com/ news/ 2020/ may/ 13/ naomi- klein- how- big- tech- plans- to- pro fit- from- coro navi rus- pande mic Lechner, F., & Boli, J. (2005). World Culture: Origins and Consequences. Wiley- Blackwell. Livingstone, S. (2021). The rise and fall of screen time. In V. C. Strasburger, Masters of Media: Controversies and Solutions (pp. 89– 104). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Livingstone, S., & Blum- Ross, A. (2020). Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and Fears about Technology Shape Children's Lives. Oxford University Press. Sammond, N. (2005). Babes in Tomorrowland: Walt Disney and the Making of the American Child, 1930– 1960. Duke University Press. Spinney, L. (2017). Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World. Public Affairs. Williamson, B., & Hogan, A. (2020). Commercialisation and Privatization in/ of Education in the Context of Covid- 19. Education International, Brussels, Belgium. http://www.theguardian.com http://www.theguardian.com Acknowledgements This book captures affective moments of family life in the uncertain times of the COVID- 19 pandemic. We especially thank the 130 parents and caregivers who gave their time and emotional energy to share their lived experiences with us, and we thank the children who were often entertaining themselves as their parents or caregivers were talking with us. This book is a collaborative effort, and each chapter has had input from a number of scholars. We especially thank Julian Sefton- Green for his thought- provoking Forward, his feedback on the chapters, and for being an essential thought- partner and cheerleader throughout the duration of the project. We thank the external chapter reviewers from the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child who provided a fresh look at each chapter: Kate Mannell, Rebecca Ng, Luci Pangrazio, and Aleesha Rodriguez. We also thank Jessica Laraine Williams for collaborating with us and masterminding our immersive online space which provides a curated experience of the interview data analysed in this book (we invite you to explore the space at https:// go.wisc.edu/ s68 k84). We thank our colleagues and PhD students for assistance on everything from gathering statistics, developing Zotero folders with the latest COVID- 19 research, to translating interview excerpts. We especially thank Estefania Galindo, Katrin Langton, Ju Lim, Jacqueline Kociubuk, Mi Yoon, and Gwanghee Kim. We also thank Loretta Watson, Project Coordinator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child (Deakin University Node), for her generous support for project logistics and administration. We are grateful to the following organisations for their funding contributions: • ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child (Grant ID: CE200100022) • Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University (Canada) • National Research Foundation of Korea (South Korea) • Sarah M. Pritchard Faculty Support Fund at the Information School, University of Wisconsin- Madison (USA) • William F. Vilas Trust Estate at the University of Wisconsin- Madison (USA) https://go.wisc.edu/s68k84 xviii Acknowledgements The views expressed are those of the authors and editors. We thank the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child and the Sarah M. Pritchard Faculty Support Fund at the University of Wisconsin- Madison for their support to make this book Open Access. newgenprepdf DOI: 10.4324/9781003458074-1 This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. 1 Introduction Families, screen media, and daily life during the pandemic Rebekah Willett ‘Generation C’, people who were children during the COVID- 19 pandemic, is under close scrutiny, with news articles, medical journals, and educators reporting signs that pandemic conditions might have had detrimental effects on children’s learning, social skills, attention spans, and mental and physical wellbeing. In the hype that surrounds these concerns, it does not take long for discussions to turn to children’s use of media during the pandemic as one of the root causes of Generation C’s ills, drawing on an age- old discourse about negative effects of media. For example, Professor of Psychology at Stanford, Keith Humphreys, is quoted in The New York Times as stating, ‘There will be a period of epic withdrawal’ that will require young people to ‘sustain attention in normal interactions without getting a reward hit every few seconds’ (Richtel, 2021). Drawing on emotive language used to describe drug addiction, Humphreys is likening children’s media consumption during the pandemic to a prolonged period of drug or alcohol abuse. Discourses from news articles such as this added to the stress of the pandemic for many fam- ilies with children. Even before the pandemic, parents felt guilty or anxious about the amount of time their children were consuming screen media, often feeling they failed to keep to the pervasive guideline of limiting children to two hours of ‘screen time’ per day (Blum- Ross & Livingstone, 2018; Willett & Wheeler, 2021). During the pandemic, parents had little choice but to throw out previous rules about how many minutes or hours per day children could spend on screen media, as children had to be online for school, online spaces provided a valuable means of socialising with friends and family, and families increasingly relied on digital spaces for entertainment, with extra- curricular activities cancelled and family spaces closed. We know that fam- ilies’ use of media increased dramatically during the pandemic, and there continues to be a feeling that there’s no turning back the clock – returning to pre- pandemic levels of family media use is out of the question. So how do we understand Generation C’s experience of media during the pandemic? What has changed, and what concerns remain? Are parents and caregivers rethinking the role of media in family life? http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003458074-1 http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003458074-1 2 Rebekah Willett Based on interviews with parents and caregivers about use of media in their homes, this book documents and analyses families’ experiences as digital media became increasingly embedded in the fabric of everyday family life during the pandemic. We heard about various family practices connected with media prior to the pandemic: screen time (the number of minutes or hours spent consuming media on screen technologies) was limited, content was restricted by setting up Netflix channels for children, weekly family movie nights involved finding something for the whole family to watch together, computers were set up in family spaces rather than in private bedrooms. We heard many parents talk in nostalgic ways of ‘the before times’ (pre- pandemic), when children were occupied with school, extracurricular activ- ities, and playing with friends; in the before times, there was little time for children to ‘be on screens’. Parents yearned for the ‘old days’ when children did not want to go to their screens as soon as they woke up in the morning, and when it was easier to set boundaries on children’s media use. As one mother in the United States described, ‘Before the pandemic, it was a strict no. Like there was no wavering… it was black or white. And now obvi- ously there’s grey areas’. This book analyses shifts away from the ‘black and white’ rules: a sense of parental control, a view of children’s engagements with media as easy to define, and the use of simplistic binary terms associated with ‘screen time’. The pandemic forced many of these views and practices to become more nuanced in order to acknowledge the ‘grey areas’. New routines and practices connected with media, often created out of necessity, indicated changes in parents’ understanding of children’s engagements with digital media. These changes responded to the realities of the pandemic, and as we analyse in this book, they reflected broader societal discourses about these topics, as well as specific micro- cultures in each household. This book captures parents’ feelings and experiences in times of lockdowns and school closures with a specific focus on children’s digital lives. In June 2020, some of the authors in this book were scheduled to present at a confer- ence about children and media. The conference was cancelled, and not only did we miss the chance to learn about and discuss current research, we also had to consider the relevance of our previous research on children and media during the dramatic shifts that were taking place as a result of the pandemic. It seemed urgent to document families’ experiences, to capture some of the affective moments of the pandemic connected with screen media, and to find out whether parents had new understandings of children’s engagements with media that responded to previous feelings of guilt and anxiety. The researchers in the United States started the project in Autumn 2020 and quickly realised that families’ experiences of media varied in different geographical areas of the United States, with some children back at school in person and others still largely confined to home. Sharing initial excitement of documenting family life during this unprecedented time led to interest by other researchers, networking through research centres, and the resulting group of authors col- laborating on this book. The research took place in seven countries, each Introduction 3 of which had different approaches to the pandemic, media, education, and family life. The number of days spent in lockdown, experiences of remote schooling, access to vaccines, and even the dates governments labelled as ‘the pandemic’ varied enormously across the seven countries. For the purpose of this book, we are focusing on families’ experiences of the pandemic from approximately January 2020 through to July 2022, with data collected at different points depending on the country context. We have attempted to cap- ture these varying contexts in Appendix 1, which provides summary timelines in each of the seven countries; and Appendix 2, which provides an overview of the research project in each country. Drawing on interviews with 130 parents, this book examines how family media practices changed during the pandemic, and ways parents’ understanding of children’s engagements with media have permanently altered. The book analyses experiences of diverse families in relation to specific cultural contexts during the pandemic, exam- ining key themes related to media use: family media practices, schooling, creativity, and regulation. This chapter provides an overview and context for the project by first summarising existing research on aspects of the pandemic experienced by children and families that are particularly relevant to the analyses in this book: screen media and childcare. The second part of this chapter describes the theoretical lenses that are threaded through the subsequent chapters to address major concepts such as media practices, parenting, childhoods, temporalities, and imaginaries. The third part of this chapter describes the research project upon which the book is based, including the methodological approach used across the seven countries. This part of the chapter highlights innovative methods, such as a visualisation exercise, and considers the layers and messiness of interviews that bear witness to the experience of the pan- demic. The chapter concludes with an overview of the remaining chapters in the book. Media and family life during the pandemic: recent scholarship Recent edited volumes about children and families in the pandemic pro- vide in- depth comparative studies that attest to the importance of analysing various cultural contexts in relation to pandemic- related experiences. The edited volume, Children and Media Worldwide in a Time of a Pandemic (Götz & Lemish, 2022) includes data from 4,200 children aged nine to 13, collected through an international survey administered in 42 countries. This volume reveals diverse ways in which children experienced media during the pandemic, including varying purposes for engaging with media and different literacies children developed as they used media in their daily lives. In a com- parative study of interview data from parents in ten countries, Family Life in the Time of COVID (Twamley et al., 2023) investigates ways families understood government responses during the pandemic, and how family circumstances and cultures shaped their experiences. This volume reveals 4 Rebekah Willett the effects of government policies and diverse sociocultural practices on the experiences of the global pandemic. Both volumes provide important com- parative analyses that add to our understanding of ways in which diverse fam- ilies experienced media during the pandemic and the role of socio- political and economic contexts in understanding these experiences. We see this volume, Children, Media, and Pandemic Parenting: Family Life in Uncertain Times, as providing an account of parents’ experiences in different cultural contexts, with a specific focus on family media use; and our contribution is less about findings resulting from comparative analyses and more about the development of analytical frameworks to explain our findings. We hope these frameworks will be useful in future research and policy making as family life becomes increasingly digital by default, and as we continue to experience uncertainty both locally and globally in relation to any number of factors. Research emerging post- pandemic points to the significance of changes in family life that occurred as a result of pandemic- related conditions. While it is challenging to summarise research on the myriad of ways families experienced screen media in the pandemic, there are some overarching themes that we identify and present in this section. We acknowledge the limitations of these brief research summaries, particularly in relation to different global contexts. Our summaries focus primarily on countries represented in this book and are largely viewed through the lens of Global North countries. The aim is to provide some contextual information for our study about family media use during the pandemic. Media during the pandemic While studies indicated children’s media use was on the rise before 2020, during the pandemic, children’s media use increased dramatically as their lives became even more digital (e.g., McArthur et al., 2021; McClain, 2022; Qustodio, 2021; RevealingReality, 2020). With schools closing for 1.5 billion students globally, many children experienced remote education at some point in the pandemic, relying on educational screen media (televi- sion, apps) or online virtual schooling for their education, private lessons, and extracurriculars (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2020). In addition to consuming more media for educational purposes, with after- school activities, summer camps, and play dates no longer an option, media were often used to occupy children while parents were working and doing household chores. Further, there were fewer options for family entertainment or outings such as going to libraries, sporting events, or museums – in many parts of the world, even playgrounds were closed early in the pandemic. With the launch of Disney+ streaming service starting in November 2019 and extending globally over the following two years, family movie viewing became a viable alternative to going out. Finally, social events and friend and family get- togethers were all done via screens. Unsurprisingly, children’s ownership of personal media devices increased Introduction 5 during the pandemic in many countries, as families struggled to provide suit- able education, social opportunities, and entertainment for their individual children. For many stakeholders, including researchers, paediatricians, and parents, this increase in children’s screen time is a concern which echoes long- standing discussions about a range of potential negative effects of children’s media consumption. Some effects relate to specific areas of media content (e.g., sex, violence, or advertising); while other effects relate to media use in gen- eral (e.g., effects on brain development, or physical effects). Some concerns relate to the notion that media use displaces other, potentially more valu- able, activities such as physical exercise, school work, or family interaction. Others reflect much broader social concerns, or concerns about values – for example in relation to consumerism or stereotyping. Children’s use of the internet for purposes such as social networking and gaming, as well as con- suming videos on YouTube and TikTok carries a further set of concerns, particularly exposure to potential content, contact, conduct, and contract risks (Livingstone & Stoilova, 2021). In addition to these concerns, there has been an increase in research about the connection between mental health and screen media use, for example, studies that examine the effects of social media on anxiety and depression in teens. In the pandemic, as children and teens were increasingly isolated at home for long periods of time with more access to technology, these concerns increased (Hmidan et al., 2022; McClain, 2022). A cross- European survey found that responding children aged ten to 18 felt they spent too much time online during the pandemic, and half indicated that they went without eating or sleeping due to their online activities, with a quarter of respondents saying that this behaviour increased during lockdowns (Lobe et al., 2021). These different types of concerns continued throughout the pandemic, with the mere increase in screen time often being equated to an increase in all of these effects. However, a description of the number of hours of screen time does not indicate what media practices look like in terms of context, content, or the individual child. There are different purposes for media use that shape how media are experienced and how they might affect indi- vidual children. From the scant research available that examines these types of questions, we know that during the pandemic, screen media were used for a variety of purposes, many of which are not subject to the concerns about media effects. Researchers are also pointing to the positive effects of screen media use during the pandemic. Most obviously, schools that were shut down for months, and even up to a year, relied on remote learning platforms and digital resources of various types to continue pupils’ educa- tion. Outside of the role of screen media in learning, studies indicated that media were used by children and teens to alleviate stress created by pan- demic conditions (Jiao et al., 2020), and families that experienced financial difficulties or other kinds of stress during the pandemic used media as a way of coping with stress or as a source of distraction from stressful situations 6 Rebekah Willett (McArthur et al., 2021; Park et al., 2022). Also highly relevant to pandemic conditions was the role of various platforms for providing opportunities for social connection. Research indicated the importance of video conferencing and other types of communication technologies for family members to keep in touch during the pandemic, particularly when families were unable to meet due to restrictions on travel and/ or risk of contact with vulnerable (eld- erly or immunocompromised) family members (Eales et al., 2021). The pan- demic also highlighted social aspects of digital games, long recognised as an important component of children’s media culture, as well as spaces for social interaction. Researchers found that digital games were helping children stay connected with peers as well as other family members, which supported their wellbeing (Cowan et al., 2021; Rideout & Robb, 2021). Furthermore, research documented playful and creative engagements with digital media, including family YouTube sing- alongs, video making projects, creating digital art, and many hobbies (Cowan et al., 2021; Rideout & Robb, 2021). In spite of these findings, a majority of research investigating parents’ and caregivers’ attitudes towards their children’s screen media use during the pan- demic indicated concern and frustration. These studies reported parents’ and caregivers’ perception that children’s screen time was far too high, resulting in various negative effects, including displacement of other activities such as physical activity, being creative, and spending time with friends and family (Graham & Sahlberg, 2021). Managing childcare during the pandemic An important context of family media use during the pandemic was the increase in childcare required when schools and after- school facilities shuttered their buildings. Sevilla and Smith (2020) estimated that families were providing 40 to 50 hours in childcare per week during lockdowns in the United Kingdom (compared with 20 hours before the pandemic). As these findings indicate, pandemic- related restrictions and lockdowns led to drastic changes in households, and for many, the rules for managing screen time needed to be rewritten. Not only did children’s day- to- day schooling, socialising, and entertainment move online, parents and carers were facing uncertain economic times, often in the midst of isolation, stress, and trauma. The pandemic had deep and long- lasting effects on mothers, particularly mothers who were managing paid work, childcare, remote schooling, and the running of the household. Single mothers who had no other adult to share childcare or economic responsibilities were particularly burdened. Across the interviews with parents that we discuss in this book, we heard about mothers who quit work or reduced their employment hours in order to pro- vide childcare and supervise remote schooling; we found that mothers voiced concerns about screen time more often than fathers; and we heard about mothers’ additional labour of organising schedules and activities to keep chil- dren occupied without school and extracurricular activities. Applying the Introduction 7 concept of the ‘circle of care’, which accounts for the interrelated aspects of paid care work, unpaid care work, and paid work, Smith (2022) illustrated ways that the pandemic conditions in Canada created feelings of guilt and distress in mothers who attempted to work from home while managing their other responsibilities. As discussed throughout the chapters in this volume, interview data document the affective aspects of this circle of care, which was felt more deeply during the pandemic. While research indicated that during lockdowns in different- sex parent households there was more sharing of responsibilities amongst parents; across the globe, women still bore the brunt of the increase in responsibil- ities for childcare, schooling, and general household tasks and were more at risk than men of psychological hardships (Azcona et al., 2020; Biroli et al., 2021; Goldin, 2022; International Labor Organization, 2020; Sevilla & Smith, 2020; Thomas et al., 2022; Twamley et al., 2023). A report from the United Nations (UN) highlighted the disproportionate burdens health emer- gencies place on women, and the effects of these additional burdens on UN Sustainable Development Goals, including gender equality (Azcona et al., 2020). Further, a report by the Center for Global Development estimated the number of hours of unpaid work provided by women compared with men during the pandemic and revealed stark disparities, particularly in low- and middle- income countries (Kenny & Yang, 2021). Importantly, The Center for Global Development report highlighted the failure by many countries to include measures of unpaid work when assessing economic develop- ment; and authors of the report speculate that increases in unpaid care work during the pandemic was felt more by certain demographics, for example by women who previously relied on schools and childcare centres, paid child- care, or after- school care, to enable them to do paid employment (O’Donnell et al., 2021). These findings align with research in the United Kingdom, where a par- liamentary report pointed to an increase in the gender gap related to time spent providing childcare during the pandemic (Women and Equalities Committee, 2021). At the same time, women were major contributors to the UK workforce, and keeping the economy on track relied on women’s labour. As Ashman et al. (2022) described in their article about the ‘mobil- ization’ of employed mothers by the UK government during the pandemic, ‘Mothers were expected by the government to manage two conflicting pri- orities: halting Covid- 19 through schooling children at home and somehow also satisfying their line managers by continuing to perform to a high standard’ (p. 1127). Similarly, in Canada, the Finance Minister said, ‘COVID has brutally exposed something women have long known: Without child- care, parents – usually mothers – can’t work’ (Freeland, 2021). Women with school- aged children experienced far greater reductions in employment compared with men (Couch et al., 2022), and there are concerns about long- lasting effects on women’s careers due to women reducing their work hours or having to quit their jobs in order to cope with increases in household 8 Rebekah Willett demands during the pandemic (Couch et al., 2022; O’Donnell et al., 2021; Sevilla & Smith, 2020). Findings from global research indicated general trends in gender inequalities in relation to paid and unpaid work during the pandemic, with disproportionate effects on women’s employment, working hours, and wages, with variations depending on specific contexts and govern- ment responses (see International Labor Organization, 2020; Mooi- Reci & Risman, 2021; O’Donnell et al., 2021). In Australia for example, the govern - ment financially supported workers whose jobs were temporarily suspended, alleviating some of the stress experienced by families. In Canada, the govern- ment opened schools and increased childcare options in Fall 2020, impacting women’s paid and unpaid employment possibilities. Importantly, in the United States, research indicated that gaps in employ- ment during the pandemic were markedly different for women of colour and those who had lower levels of education who worked in areas such as childcare, health care, restaurants, and beauty services which were shuttered during lockdowns and sometimes did not reopen (Goldin, 2022). For women of colour, this exacerbated persistent wage gaps that have created a situation whereby women of colour are less likely to have savings and be able to withstand economic crises (Bleiweis et al., 2021). Thus, family eco- nomic security was particularly precarious in communities of colour, where women disproportionately work in part- time, less secure jobs that cannot be done from home. Women, and particularly women of colour, were more likely than men to lose their jobs due to layoffs necessitated by economic conditions in the pandemic. In addition, because women of colour were more likely to be in jobs that could not be done remotely, they experienced higher rates of exposure to the Coronavirus. These disparities are not unique to the United States. Research highlighted that socio- economic inequalities, particularly in countries with underfunded healthcare systems, resulted in disproportionate effects of COVID- 19 and pandemic conditions on lower income families, and people from racially minoritised groups (Blundell et al., 2021; OECD, 2022). Feminist economists use the term ‘third shift’ to refer to the care mostly provided by women that involves unpaid and undervalued labour in households, and Power (2020) asked if we now need to add a ‘fourth shift’ (remote schooling while working) to this framework. During the pandemic, remote schooling consisted of synchronous and asynchronous digital activ- ities, both requiring active parental involvement. Various forms of ‘hybrid schooling’ also emerged as the pandemic wore on, with a combination of remote and in- person instruction, with children attending for part of the week or certain ages of children attending in- person. Across the interviews we analyse in this book, parents inevitably raised their concern and frustration that remote schooling meant far more screen time than previously allowed in their households. Coupled with the stress of having to alter screen time rules to take account of remote schooling, parents were expected to support their children’s schooling in new ways. Parents and carers were responsible for Introduction 9 providing adequate internet access and devices, as well as being mediators and facilitators of children’s remote schooling, and not all parents were equipped, available, or inclined to take up these new roles. Given that fam- ilies had different access to the internet and digital devices, as well as varying levels of digital competency, the expected affordances of remote schooling did not benefit all students. For example, in families with children who had special educational needs, and in families whose first language was not the language of instruction, parents faced further challenges in trying to support their children’s learning through remote schooling (Crescenza et al., 2021; Wood et al., 2021). Further, several studies found that parents resisted remote schooling, feeling sceptical about its educational effectiveness compared to traditional ways of learning (Dong et al., 2020; Weaver & Swank, 2021; Zhang, 2021). With school closures, many children missed opportunities for in- person peer interactions, leading to concerns about children’s social- emotional development at critical developmental milestones. As the pan- demic wore on, parents we interviewed for this book were intensely aware of these concerns as well as reports about ‘learning loss’ that appeared in the mainstream press (see Moscoviz & Evans, 2022). These findings and reports placed even more pressure on parents to provide children with opportunities for social, emotional, and educational growth as part of their management of childcare during the pandemic. Theoretical lenses The parents we interviewed for this project were experiencing the context described above, with many variations due to a range of factors including government approaches during the pandemic, family employment and socio- economic situations, health concerns, ages of children in the home, and so on (see Appendix 1 for summary overviews of pandemic timelines and Appendix 3 for details about each participating parent). The five analysis chapters which follow in this volume take account of these different contexts as we strive to understand and conceptualise families’ experiences of media during the pandemic. This section turns to the theoretical lenses which we developed as we read and reread the interviews and had conversations as a research team about how we might understand parents’ experiences. The first lens considers family media practices, parenting, and childhoods. In this book, we are interested in unpacking the multi- dimensional relationships between media, parenting, and family life. We see ‘digital parenting’ as more than parents’ practices of regulation and mediation of media and technologies in the home. By digital parenting, we are considering a range of media uses, routines, and rituals, as well as parents’ understanding, discursive construc- tion, and affective relationships to domestic media practices. Arguing for a need to focus on practice rather than media texts or industry, Couldry (2004) writes, ‘we need the perspective of practice to help us address how media are embedded in the interlocking fabric of social and cultural life’ (p. 129), 10 Rebekah Willett and he summarises practice- based research questions as follows: ‘what range of practices are oriented to media and what is the role of media- oriented practices in ordering other practices?’ (p. 130). We use the term ‘family media practices’ to include various uses of screen media (e.g., for socialising, enter- tainment, education), as well as considering screen media as an integral part of family life, with media devices determining how spaces are considered (e.g., large screens central to shared family spaces), how time is structured (e.g., family movie nights), and ways childhood is experienced (e.g., use of parental controls to limit content). To investigate parenting during the pan- demic, we seek to understand ways that media were embedded in day- to- day life when lockdowns and other restrictions were in place, times when media were seen as new or exceptional to daily routines, and ways media structured the domestic sphere during lockdowns. Further, we recognise ways that family media practices are formed within and through various relations and contexts, including local and global politics, macro- and micro- cultures, other people, material objects, time, and space (Burkitt, 2016). We seek to see how the relations within specific domestic contexts shape the experience of digital parenting during the pandemic. We recognise that ‘parenting’, a term only widely used in the past two decades, is positioned and constructed by dominant discourses that change over time and are experienced differently across geographical spaces (Cook, 2020; Faircloth & Lee, 2010; Lee, 2014). Daniel Cook argues that in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a scientific approach to child- rearing dominated magazines, books, manuals, and programs for mothers in the United States, putting pressure on mothers to be informed with scientific research and medical advice about children’s moral development, health, welfare, and education (2020). Importantly, there has been a recent shift towards skills and knowledge of ‘parenting’ rather than knowledge of child development, described by Lee as, ‘An increasing propensity to focus on the “ought” of what the parents should do, rather than the “is”, of the child’ (2014, p. 67). This increases the feeling that there are right and wrong ways to do parenting. Indeed, various initiatives aimed at improving the welfare of children frame parenting as a set of skills, subject to surveillance by the state. In relation to screen media, discussions of parenting include various discursive constructs related to benefits and risks of technologies, children’s developmental needs, childhood innocence, risk management, parental authority, and so on (Clark, 2013; Livingstone, 2009; Vickery, 2017). Importantly, ‘good parenting’ is clearly defined in relation to assumed effects of media on children, resulting in recommendations for parents to evaluate screen media and tightly regu- late their children’s media consumption. In their analysis of interviews with parents, Blum- Ross and Livingstone write, ‘time and again we heard parents of young children struggle to balance the convenience of screen time with their worries about being a “good” parent’ (2018, p. 183). Researchers have identified numerous forms and styles of parental medi- ation in relation to screen technology: posing restrictions, discussing content, Introduction 11 co- using media, monitoring by staying nearby or checking browser his- tory, and using technical restrictions (see Clark, 2011; Livingstone et al., 2017; Nikken & Schols, 2015). These types of parental mediation involve parents in evaluating children’s media, with preference given to ‘high quality’ media, discussing media and co- participating in media consumption in par- ticular ways, and establishing and enforcing strict rules about media use, including ‘screen- free’ times and spaces. These expectations connected with parental mediation draw on neoliberal discourses of ‘individualisation’ and ‘responsibilisation’ which position decisions and actions, for example, as the sole responsibility of individuals (i.e., parents) (see Garrett et al., 2016; Rose 1999). Further, parental mediation theories assume that media can be isolated and then monitored, whereas we know family life is richly intertwined with various media forms and, particularly in the pandemic, media were every- where in domestic routines and spaces. By approaching parenting from a media practice perspective, our analyses reveal a more holistic analysis of parental mediation and practices, recognising ways parents’ guidance and decision- making connected with media are embedded in daily life. In Chapter 2, Sheppard, Zhao and Coulter take a relational approach to the data, iden- tifying assemblages in the domestic setting that need to be accounted for when analysing family mediation practices, for example, ways that parents’ attitudes towards technology, perception of risk and ideas about childhood, and views of children as more or less able to self- regulate, inform parents’ practices. Alongside these approaches to parenting and family media practices, sev- eral of the authors in this volume have a background in childhood studies which guides the questions we ask and our understanding of families. Rather than focusing on children’s development or seeing families as individual units that are unified in their thinking, we recognise children as autonomous indi- viduals within families, and we are interested in children’s cultures within domestic settings. We recognise children as key negotiators within the media practices of households. Further, we are attuned to ways that ‘childhood’ is discursively constructed and ways that broad discourses about childhood, for example, childhood innocence, shape parents’ understandings of their role as parents. We recognise that childhood is experienced differently across time and geographical spaces, and that aspects such as gender, social class, and ethnicity create differentiated childhoods. The second lens considers temporalities. Time and space were defining components of lockdowns with some governments limiting the number of minutes people were allowed outside their homes and wide- spread imple- mentation of social distancing policies (see Appendix 1). Families experienced dramatic changes to their daily and weekly schedules, markers of time passing such as birthday parties and graduation ceremonies were missed or convened in online spaces, and spaces in homes were reconfigured to allow family members to work, attend school, play, socialise, and stay entertained. We draw loosely on social analyses of time (e.g., Adam, 1995) to understand 12 Rebekah Willett these changes and tensions connected with temporalities. Rather than seeing time as linear, as measured by clocks and calendars, the analysis considers different experiences of time during the pandemic. We heard parents talk about time as feeling precious – a sense that this time together as a family should be cherished and enjoyed before life returned to its usual pace. We heard about time during lockdowns as feeling monot- onous – each day was in some ways the same, and families were running out of ways to pass time. Even weekends lost their meaningful routines and markers of the week. However, particularly when children were in remote learning and parents were working, we heard about time as fleeting and feeling hectic. Further, we consider ways that parents’ construction of their past and their families’ imagined future inform their understanding and actions in the pre- sent. By viewing time as socially constructed, our analyses allow us to consider how ‘pandemic time’ was experienced in different ways. Parents attempted to set schedules in order to regulate time and structure lockdown days, remote schooling put pressures on families to follow a tight schedule and configure time and space connected with media devices, and children’s time on screens increased to fill the time previously occupied by extracurricular activities and family outings. Figure 1.1 is a photo shared by a Colombian mother, which shows her six- year- old daughter pointing to a schedule the mother created to break up the day into activities from 8am to 8pm. Table 1.1 shows the remote schooling schedule that a US mother was expected to facilitate for her seven- year- old son, by ensuring he was ready and in the correct online space at 8am and then monitoring changes of activities every 20- minutes or so. For parents with children engaged in remote schooling, time regulated their lives. Yet simultaneously, time passed, children grew older, and family engagements with media shifted to allow for children’s development and the slow passing of time; and in some ways, time was paused as certain activ- ities and relationships went on hiatus, with potential to be continued at an indeterminate date. As discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, the pervasive screen time discourse continued to dominate parents’ minds, with parents creating new coping strategies by relabelling what counted as screen time, anxiously attempting to create balance between online and offline activities, or simply giving up on limiting screen time in hopes of regaining control over their children’s screen time post- pandemic. Our third lens considers parental imaginaries and ways that parents experi- ence and position themselves in relation to their role in their children’s future with media and technologies. As we listened to parents discuss decisions they made about what media were in their homes, how much access children had to media, how to regulate and mediate children’s engagement with media, we heard about parents’ imagined futures for their children and for the role of technology in society. Parents frequently indicated that they supported their children’s digital skill development because they imagined these skills to be essential in their children’s future lives, in their education, as well as their future careers. As Livingstone and Blum- Ross describe, ‘Each act of Introduction 13 parenting has a double meaning – as an intervention in the present and an effort to bring about a particular future, even if this future cannot be fully named and the path to achieving it is uncertain’ (2020, p. 6). These imaginaries draw on and reflect parents’ understanding of media, as well as their children’s future: parents’ fears about the increase of screen time during the pandemic balanced with their imaginaries of a technology- driven future. We found imaginaries that were hopeful, such as when parents anticipated their children’s skills in navigating online spaces required by school, and searching for information for school and for hobbies, would be lifelong skills useful in future digital worlds. We also heard about imaginaries that were anxiety- producing, such as feelings that children would be unable to control their desire for screen time, leading to worries about children’s future social skills, mental and physical health, and creativity. In some ways, the imagined future with media and technology became a reality during the pandemic, when after- school sports were replaced with vir- tual games, personal interactions were all done through screens, and family Figure 1.1 Homemade pandemic daily schedule for a six- year- old in Colombia. Photo by the six- year- old’s mother. Included with permission. 14 R ebekah W illett Table 1.1 Weekly remote schooling schedule for seven- year- old in the United States Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday 8- 8:20 Morning Meeting 8- 8:20 Morning Meeting View Message from Teacher 8- 8:20 Morning Meeting 8- 8:20 Morning Meeting 8:20- 8:35 Reading Mini Lesson 8:20- 8:50 Independent Reading or Meet with teacher 8:20- 9:05 Independent Reading And/ Or SeeSaw Reading Activity 8:20- 8:35 Reading Mini Lesson 8:20- 8:50 Independent Reading or Meet with teacher 8:35- 9:05 Independent Reading or Meet with teacher 8:50- 9:20 BREAK 8:35- 9:05 Independent Reading or Meet with teacher 8:50- 9:20 BREAK 9:05- 9:20 BREAK BREAK 9:05- 9:20 BREAK 9:20- 9:40 Phonics Lesson 9:20- 9:40 Phonics Seesaw 9:20- 9:40 Phonics Seesaw 9:20- 9:40 Phonics Lesson 9:20- 9:40 Phonics Lesson 9:40- 9:55 Writing Lesson 9:40- 9:55 BREAK 9:40- 9:55 Writing Lesson 9:40- 9:55 BREAK 9:55- 10:25 Ind. writing (not online) and possible conf. with teacher 9:55- 10:25 Ind. writing (not online) and possible conf. w/ teacher or sm. group 9:55- 10:25 Ind. writing or Seesaw activity 9:55- 10:25 Ind. writing (not online) and possible conf. with teacher 9:55- 10:25 Ind. writing (not online) and possible conf. with teacher 10:25- 10:55 ENCORE 10:25- 10:55 ENCORE 10:25- 10:55 ENCORE 10:25- 10:55 ENCORE 10:55- 11:20 LUNCH 10:55- 11:20 LUNCH 10:55- 11:20 LUNCH 10:55- 11:20 LUNCH 11:20- 11:40 Number Corner 11:20- 11:40 Number Corner 11:20- 1w1:40 Number Corner (Seesaw) 11:20- 11:40 Number Corner 11:20- 11:40 Number Corner 11:40- 12:10 Ind. practice or work with teacher 11:40- 12:10 Math Lesson 11:40- 12:10 Math Activity (Seesaw) 11:40- 12:10 Ind. practice or work with teacher 11:40- 12:25 Math Lesson 12:10- 12:25 BREAK 12:10- 12:25 BREAK 12:10- 12:25 BREAK 12:25- 12:30 BREAK 12:30- 1:00 Ind. Social Studies or Science 12:30- 1:00 Social Studies or Science Lesson 12:30- 1:00 Ind. Social Studies or Science 12:30- 1:00 Social Studies or Science Lesson 1:00- 1:30 Encore Small Group/ Office Hours 1:00- 1:30 Encore Small Group/ Office Hours 1:00- 1:30 Encore Small Group/ Office Hours 1:00- 1:30 Encore Small Group/ Office Hours Orange: zoom live instruction Purple: recorded lesson, link in Seesaw Blue: Activity is linked in seesaw Green: Student Break Time White: Flexible timing new genrtpdf Introduction 15 Table 1.1 Weekly remote schooling schedule for seven- year- old in the United States Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday 8- 8:20 Morning Meeting 8- 8:20 Morning Meeting View Message from Teacher 8- 8:20 Morning Meeting 8- 8:20 Morning Meeting 8:20- 8:35 Reading Mini Lesson 8:20- 8:50 Independent Reading or Meet with teacher 8:20- 9:05 Independent Reading And/ Or SeeSaw Reading Activity 8:20- 8:35 Reading Mini Lesson 8:20- 8:50 Independent Reading or Meet with teacher 8:35- 9:05 Independent Reading or Meet with teacher 8:50- 9:20 BREAK 8:35- 9:05 Independent Reading or Meet with teacher 8:50- 9:20 BREAK 9:05- 9:20 BREAK BREAK 9:05- 9:20 BREAK 9:20- 9:40 Phonics Lesson 9:20- 9:40 Phonics Seesaw 9:20- 9:40 Phonics Seesaw 9:20- 9:40 Phonics Lesson 9:20- 9:40 Phonics Lesson 9:40- 9:55 Writing Lesson 9:40- 9:55 BREAK 9:40- 9:55 Writing Lesson 9:40- 9:55 BREAK 9:55- 10:25 Ind. writing (not online) and possible conf. with teacher 9:55- 10:25 Ind. writing (not online) and possible conf. w/ teacher or sm. group 9:55- 10:25 Ind. writing or Seesaw activity 9:55- 10:25 Ind. writing (not online) and possible conf. with teacher 9:55- 10:25 Ind. writing (not online) and possible conf. with teacher 10:25- 10:55 ENCORE 10:25- 10:55 ENCORE 10:25- 10:55 ENCORE 10:25- 10:55 ENCORE 10:55- 11:20 LUNCH 10:55- 11:20 LUNCH 10:55- 11:20 LUNCH 10:55- 11:20 LUNCH 11:20- 11:40 Number Corner 11:20- 11:40 Number Corner 11:20- 1w1:40 Number Corner (Seesaw) 11:20- 11:40 Number Corner 11:20- 11:40 Number Corner 11:40- 12:10 Ind. practice or work with teacher 11:40- 12:10 Math Lesson 11:40- 12:10 Math Activity (Seesaw) 11:40- 12:10 Ind. practice or work with teacher 11:40- 12:25 Math Lesson 12:10- 12:25 BREAK 12:10- 12:25 BREAK 12:10- 12:25 BREAK 12:25- 12:30 BREAK 12:30- 1:00 Ind. Social Studies or Science 12:30- 1:00 Social Studies or Science Lesson 12:30- 1:00 Ind. Social Studies or Science 12:30- 1:00 Social Studies or Science Lesson 1:00- 1:30 Encore Small Group/ Office Hours 1:00- 1:30 Encore Small Group/ Office Hours 1:00- 1:30 Encore Small Group/ Office Hours 1:00- 1:30 Encore Small Group/ Office Hours Orange: zoom live instruction Purple: recorded lesson, link in Seesaw Blue: Activity is linked in seesaw Green: Student Break Time White: Flexible timing 16 Rebekah Willett members were ‘glued’ to individual devices. When projecting to the future, the parents we interviewed often reflected on their own childhoods and worried that their children were too dependent on technologies, and that the current situation was radically different from their experiences of growing up. While these sentiments existed before the pandemic, families’ experiences with media during lockdown heightened these feelings, and in particular a feeling of loss of control, or a struggle to maintain any sense of control over their children’s media use, and a feeling of uncertainty about when pandemic conditions would end and whether they would be able to go back to rules and routines established pre- pandemic. We asked families what they imagined post- pandemic media use would look like, and as discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, parents imagined a future with media technology embedded in daily life; however, they hoped their children would use media deliberately, and as one tool amongst many for communication, entertainment, learning, and ways to pass time. Alongside these parental imaginaries are those imaginaries enacted by the state and technology corporations that were articulated and reinforced through dominant discourse about children and media and the role of parents in mediating and regulating their children’s media use. State imaginaries posit children as future citizens who need to be technologically competent, media savvy, and socially and emotionally healthy. Various stakeholders voiced imaginaries about detrimental effects of pandemic- related conditions on children: learning loss, poor social skills, media addiction, and so on. These imaginaries had implications for parents struggling to make decisions about family media practices in the home, as domestic life became increasingly embedded with digital technologies. State imaginaries are the backdrop to the analyses throughout the book and are directly addressed in Chapter 6. In numerous chapters we detail ways that imaginaries about ‘good’ parenting practices from stakeholders (government officials, professionals including paediatricians and educators, and non- governmental organisations pro- viding advice about screen media practices) shaped parents’ understanding of children’s media use and family media practices. Together, these imaginaries about children’s futures from parents and the state help us understand the emotional struggles, including hopes and fears parents faced as they made decisions about their family media practices during the pandemic. General research methods The research project upon which this book is based includes seven coun- tries: Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Chapters 2 through 6 analyse data from parallel studies across these seven countries. The studies involved researchers in each location conducting interviews with parents and caregivers who had children aged four to 11. [Throughout this volume, we use ‘parents’ as shorthand to refer to both parents and caregivers.] Together, we interviewed Introduction 17 130 parents (113 mothers and 17 fathers) following the same protocol, with minor adaptations for local contexts. Each study received ethics approval from the relevant institutional review board. Researchers drew on available financial resources, including small local grants where available to support project expenses. The studies employed an initial online questionnaire completed by each participant, followed by 40 to 50- minute semi- structured interviews via video conference software (e.g., Zoom, WhatsApp). The questionnaire asked background information on each participant and their family, including questions about family make- up (number and ages of chil- dren, marital status), demographics (ethnicities, parents’ education, employ- ment), availability of home media, and mode and type of schooling provided during the pandemic. Interview questions focused on experiences of the pan- demic, particularly in connection with children’s use of media in the home. As semi- structured interviews, we had a list of questions that addressed spe- cific topics, and we encouraged participants to elaborate on ideas that seemed important or distinct to their family context. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and then read and reread by the interviewers as we moved into the initial preliminary analysis phase. Detailed information about each study (researchers, recruitment methods, overviews of participants) is provided in Appendices 2 and 3. Initial analysis of interview data was led by the United States research team who developed first cycle descriptive codes that identified patterns (similarities, differences, frequencies, comparisons) in the US data (Saldaña, 2016). Second cycle coding involved grouping the descriptive codes into cat- egories by identifying themes that ran across the different codes. This process resulted in a codebook that was shared with all researchers for discussion, trial coding, and adjustment. During these discussions, additional descriptive codes were added that were relevant to particular country contexts. After this third cycle of coding, the revised codebook was applied to data from all countries in Dedoose (see Appendix 4 ‘Codebook’). At this stage in the preliminary analysis, the codes and categories were fairly broad: the primary aim of this coding process was to get the large volume of data into manage- able chunks for further analysis. The thematic categories that emerged from this process led to the choices of the chapter themes (changes in media use, education, creativity, regulation), with the more descriptive codes providing points of comparison when authors started discussing their chapter analyses. For each chapter, the authors focused on one category or code and provided examples of data for each code, noting absences in their data set, ideas for new codes, and writing observational memos. This provided the starting point for conversations about elements within each code that came to light when compiling data from the different countries. At this point, researchers entered into dialogue about theoretical lenses that would help to highlight and explain some of the elements that were similar or contrasting across the different data sets represented in each chapter. The pro- cess of analysis was proceeded by jointly defining specific theories, developing 18 Rebekah Willett specific theoretical frameworks to explain the data, and writing analytic memos to start applying the frameworks with the data. This often involved multiple rounds of analysis, with researchers moving back and forth between data and theoretical frameworks in order to adjust the frameworks to align with the data. These conversations and formation of frameworks were a form of ‘slow scholarship’ (Hartman & Darab, 2012), with the evolution of frameworks taking many months to solidify as researchers read theories new to them, discussed ways the theories helped to explain the data, incorporated theories into the analytical framework, and then reapplied the framework to the data sets. Notably, the theoretical frameworks were a result of dialogue between researchers coming from different related fields and areas of interest as well as different cultural contexts. The resulting frameworks incorporate lenses from childhood studies, family studies, education, cultural and media studies, and affect studies. Conducting interviews during the pandemic was made easier in some ways, due to parents’ familiarity with video conference software, which for many was the way families kept in touch with other family members, as well as being their default meeting mode for work. Even if interviews happened outside of lockdowns, we still conducted interviews via video conferencing software or phone due to the ease of scheduling interviews. Research indicates that video conference interviews also allow easier par- ticipation and provide a more relaxed setting, as interviewees do not need to leave their home or have researchers enter their home (Sipes et al., 2019; Weller, 2017). To address potential barriers to access and ethical consider- ations connected with having visual access to the inside of people’s homes, we offered telephone interviews, and the option to turn cameras off; however, most participants chose to participate through video with their cameras on. While this allowed us access to some non- verbal cues, the distance created by technology might also have prevented us from interpreting subtle body lan- guage including signs of distress (Sipes et al., 2019). However, the pandemic as experienced by parents with children aged four to 11 was fraught with higher demands than usual as parents tried to educate, entertain, and main- tain their children’s health, as well as their social and emotional wellbeing, in the midst of multiple potential crises. A vast majority of the parents we interviewed continued paid employment through the pandemic while con- tinuing childcare duties, which increased exponentially when children were doing remote schooling (see Appendices 1 and 3). Our interviews, therefore, were often interrupted by these parenting responsibilities (cf., Faircloth et al., 2022). As parents told us about the challenges of their daily lives, we saw and heard evidence of children asking for assistance with tasks, requesting parents’ attention, and being fed up with lockdown. Our transcripts contain moments of interruption and reassurance (‘five more minutes and then I’ll be with you’) that illustrate the very ideas parents were trying to communicate to us. In some ways, these moments were important points of reflection for us as interviewers, highlighting the privilege that many of us had as researchers Introduction 19 who were able to take time to conduct interviews, and reinforcing the power imbalance with interviewers asking questions, directing the conversation, and ultimately interpreting the participants’ words. Unsurprisingly, the interviews were filled with affective moments, and the semi- structured nature of the interviews allowed us to follow up on responses that indicated a deeper story to tell. At the end of each interview, we conducted a photo elicitation exercise, which involved researchers sharing their screen to show an online image site such as Unsplash or Pixabay. We informed participants that we were going to search for an image that they felt encapsulated their feelings about their families’ experiences with screen media during the pandemic. We started with search terms ‘children’ and ‘media’ and entered more search terms suggested by interviewees, looking through the image selections and adding other search terms as the algorithm responded to the different searches. The chapters which follow contain some of these images and selected search terms as well as parents’ explanations of the meanings they associate with the image. This final visualisation exer- cise highlights some of the messiness of our interviews – we were asking parents to summarise experiences of an unprecedented global event in just 45 minutes; for some, the questions we asked elicited emotional responses; and for many of the participants, we were dropping in to gather data and then leaving families to their pandemic situations. For some parents, we had the feeling that they were seeking validation about their parenting practices. Although we shared some early results of our study with participants through blog posts and news articles as a way of acknowledging their contribution to our longer- term academic study and maintaining some transparency connected with our interpretation of the data, the analyses ultimately reflect researchers’ viewpoints and interests. We feel that our grounded and collab- orative approach to the analyses in each chapter, which led us to the theoret- ical lenses described above, help to mitigate some of these power imbalances. We recognise that we are telling and shaping personal stories, and we strive to honour the voices and experiences of parents in the chapters that follow. Overviews of the chapters This volume includes co- written chapters on different themes with two or three countries represented in each chapter. Themes for the chapters are based on joint coding of interview data, and potentially all countries could have been represented in each chapter. We chose to focus each chapter on countries that had different contexts and potentially contrasting parent perspectives on each topic – for example, government regulation is an important context in Chapter 6 that includes data from China, South Korea, and the United States, countries with interestingly varied approaches to government regu- lation of media. In selecting countries for joint analysis, we considered both similarities and differences in the context of each study, such as availability of affordable health care, authoritarian versus more democratic governmental 20 Rebekah Willett approaches, and individual versus collective cultures. As we shared initial findings from our data during our biweekly meetings, we also developed an understanding of differences in pandemic- specific contexts such as number of days of lockdown, provisions for key workers, access to vaccines, and acceptance or resistance to school closures and requirements, as well as how these contexts potentially shaped family media practices. We also considered our different areas of expertise and how different lenses would contribute to the analyses in each chapter. As the researchers for each chapter delved into their data and discussed potential themes, overlaps, and differences, the the- oretical frameworks described above emerged as highly relevant and fruitful ways of understanding family media practices in different countries. We are particularly excited to bring these frameworks to this study of families and media as a way of understanding the relevance of the pandemic experience in scholarship moving forward. Chapter 2 draws on interviews with parents in Nanjing, China, and mothers in Ontario, Canada, to analyse relational family media practices. In particular, this chapter explores the shifting temporal and spatial dimensions of families’ media practices, bringing together analytical approaches from media studies and sociology. The focus on China and Canada in this chapter allowed the authors to contrast experiences in a country with state- regulated media and a more communal approach to family (China), with more indi- vidualistic approaches to both media and family (Canada). Using a relational lens, the authors complicate a focus on parents as the sole decision makers and actors that affect children’s screen media use. Attending to the networks of relations that parents are embedded in, including individuals, material objects, discourses, time, space, and broader socio- political contexts, adds nuance to understanding family media practices during the COVID- 19 pan- demic. By foregrounding the various people, things, ideas, times, and spaces which affect children’s screen media practices, this chapter aims to acknow- ledge the relational, contested, and complicated nature of screen media in children’s and families’ lives. Chapter 3 examines shifts in parents’ understanding of family media practices with a particular focus on their new insights on children’s use of digital media that came as a result of pandemic family life. The chapter analyses findings from Australia, China, and the United States, specifically examining changes in parents’ understanding of their children’s media use. As indicated in the Appendices, parents we interviewed from these countries had very different experiences of the pandemic, with most of the Australian participants experiencing 263 days of stringent lockdown, parents in China experiencing temporary ‘snap’ lockdowns, and some US families experiencing remote or hybrid schooling for 15 months with very little familial or state government support for working parents. Further, government approaches to media regulation varied, with China implementing screen time and smart phone restrictions for different age groups, emphasising perceived addictive qualities of these media. With increases in children’s use of media and the Introduction 21 new contexts introduced by the pandemic, parents reassessed previous rules and routines, observed more of what their children were doing with digital technologies, and subsequently reevaluated their understanding of the role of screen media in children’s lives. This chapter identifies three main changes in parents’ understanding of children’s media use: greater distinctions between children’s purposes for using media, increased understanding of media con- tent, and exacerbated worries about screen media. The chapter explains these changes by applying the lens of time and temporality. The authors argue that it was the parents’ understanding, experiences, and imaginaries of mul- tiple forms of time during lockdowns that shaped parental attitudes towards screen media across the three countries. Chapter 4 explores how parents engaged with remote, screen- mediated schooling during the pandemic, drawing on data from South Korea and the United Kingdom. These countries provide an interesting contrast, with South Korea having no lockdowns, and the United Kingdom implementing three separate lockdowns with regional variations (see Appendix 1). In terms of education and schooling, there are key contrasts in these countries, with the existence in South Korea of an intense private supplementary tutoring system (Sa Gyo Yuk in Korean). Further, although children in both countries were provided with remote schooling options, in the United Kingdom, participa- tion was optional until September 2020, whereas in South Korea teachers were required to take attendance. Finally, the countries have contrasting policies concerning children’s use of technologies, with the South Korean government implementing national- level policies to prevent internet and smartphone overdependence, and the United Kingdom government leaving the decisions about children’s technology access to parents. These different areas of contrast are relevant when considering remote schooling during the pandemic. With h