Culturally mediated practices fuelling intergenerational tensions about online sociodramatic play in Australian family homes

The synchronous use of multiplayer virtual worlds (e.g., Minecraft) with video-chat software platforms (e.g., FaceTime) is a highly valued recreational online play activity for many children globally. In the family home, children’s ability to engage in online play is often reliant on the way their caregivers enact everyday practices to implement household rules for such play (e.g., online safety rules, screen time rules). For caregivers who did not engage in online play during childhood, these practices are generally mediated by cultural resources, such as online safety advice and screen time discourses. Such resources, however, may be based on previous generations of thinking that are unlikely to consider the unique developmental needs of children being raised in highly digitalised societies, fuelling intergenerational tensions that rarely existed previously. This paper reports findings from a study that addressed this contemporary dilemma by identifying how caregivers’ culturally mediated practices in Australian family homes potentially fuel intergenerational tensions about a specific form of online play – defined as online sociodramatic play. Collectively, findings suggested a need for new cultural resources that mediate caregiver practices in ways that minimise such tensions and better support the developmental needs of children who enjoy engaging in online sociodramatic play.