Adolescents’ perspectives on the role of ICTs in everyday life: An ethnographic study on practices, representations, and emotions.

The present contribution builds upon the preliminary results of a research project funded by the European Commission, and aimed at documenting the role of ICTs in adolescent development and family communication. A trans disciplinary approach of developmental/social psychology and media studies, and mixed-method procedures, including innovative ethnographic methods, informed the research project. Twenty Italian adolescents (14-16 years) and their families were recruited through secondary schools and were involved in the research over a one-year period. For the purpose of this contribution, I discuss results concerning the practices, representations, and emotions of adolescents using ICTs’, and illustrate child-centered ethnographic procedures, namely Subjective Evidence Based Ethnography (SEBE), i.e. first-person perspective data gathering via micro-cameras (subcam). The analyses of video-recordings, made by adolescents, leverage insights on the use of ICTs in everyday-life situations (homework, dinner, leisure time): (a) Adolescents showed a preference for a combination of old and new digital media (smartphones and TV), (b) smartphones afforded the extension of social and cognitive offline activities (c) negative emotions were associated with ‘perpetual connection’, i.e. full-time contact. Processes of smooth/rough domestication and strategies developed by adolescents to deal with the use of ICTs are discussed

The psychology of children with same-sex parents

What does it mean to become parents in a stigmatising political and sociocultural context? Marina Everri discusses her thoughts from her new book on same-sex parents and their children living in Italy

Introduzione

In Italy, same-sex parenting has recently entered public debate, raising concerns, passion, anger and, eventually, the passing of a law that has (finally) acknowledged same-sex civil partnership. What is the position of cutting-edge research on same-sex families in Italy? Which instruments can professionals rely on to respond to same-sex families’ needs? Are political and legal institutions effectively supporting the rights of same-sex couples, such as the right to be acknowledged as citizens as well as parents like others and among others? The book "Genitori come gli altri e tra gli altri: Essere genitori omosessuali in Italia" (‘Parents like others and among others: Being same-sex parents in Italy’) responds to these questions by gathering together contributions from researchers, practitioners, and representatives of political and legal institutions as well as LGBTQI associations to provide an in-depth examination of same-sex parenting in Italy. The first section of the book illustrates recent scientific research on same-sex couples and parents, carried out in Italy. The second section highlights the expertise of professionals working in educational, clinical and social services who have developed new interventions attuned to the specific needs of the diverse forms of families. The third section addresses the challenges that politicians, jurists and LGBTQI associations have to face in the near future: namely, opening a path to changes that allow diverse social minorities, which are increasingly characterizing Italian sociocultural context, to be legally acknowledged and socially supported. In the different parts of the book, I highlight the need to delineate a new perspective on the study of the specific needs of not only same-sex families, but all contemporary families. Same-sex families in Italy are only one among other social minorities that oblige researchers, practitioners and politicians to become aware of the rapid sociocultural transformations characterizing this country. This obligation requires researchers, practitioners, politicians and others to question dated models which discriminate against minority and diverse family groups and to intervene at different levels in order to address their emerging needs. To this end, the book is interdisciplinary: it collects contributions from social scientists, politicians, jurists and activists committed to making the Italian political and sociocultural context a more equal place for all citizens. Students, researchers, practitioners and the general public will find interesting insights on what it means to become same-sex parents in a country that is mainly hostile to them

‘Space invaders’: are smartphones really transforming parents and adolescents’ ways of communicating?

Marina Everri takes a closer look at the ways in which smartphones impact family life in Italy, and whether they are changing the ways in which parents and adolescents interact. Marina is a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

Adolescenti, genitori e media digitali: alla ricerca della “rete” che dis/connette

I genitori come possono sopravvivere all’adolescenza dei figli? E come possono attrezzarsi di fronte a conflitti, porte chiuse, Smartphones, YouTube, WhatsApp e ormoni che invadono le case? E gli adolescenti, come possono sopportare genitori che parlano una lingua sempre più diversa dalla loro? Che ruolo hanno le nuove tecnologie digitali in questi cambiamenti? In sostanza, oggi, come si può stare bene in famiglia anche quando tutto sembra fuori controllo

Adolescenti & Famiglie: Un progetto di ricerca in collaborazione con Unità di Psicologia,Università di Parma e Istituto G. M. Colombini di Piacenza

Questo progetto di ricerca nasce dalla collaborazione tra l’istituto G. M. Colombini di Piacenza e il Dipartimento di Psicologia dell’Università di Parma, al quale la sottoscritta afferisce come ricercatrice. Il lavoro di ricerca intendeva approfondire le dinamiche evolutive di studenti adolescenti, appartenenti a due fasce d’età: 14/15 anni e frequentanti la prima superiore e 18/19 anni frequentati la quinta superiore. Hanno partecipato al progetto due classi prime e due classi seconde dell’Istituto G. M. Colombini. Nell’arco di circa un mese e mezzo nelle quattro classi sono stati somministrati questionari e compiti di discussione in piccoli gruppi su temi dilemmatici. Ai ragazzi è stato anche chiesto di svolgere alcuni video-clip che riguardassero i momenti e/o luoghi rappresentativi del loro tempo libero. Il progetto di ricerca prevedeva, inoltre, il coinvolgimento delle famiglie dei ragazzi. Tramite la presentazione di una lettera la ricercatrice ha invitato i genitori degli studenti di tutte le classi a partecipare a un’intervista familiare presso le loro abitazioni. L’intervista verteva sui cambiamenti e sulle sfide dell’adolescenza e richiedeva la partecipazione di tutti i membri del nucleo familiare. Nelle pagine successive sono presentati e discussi i risultati principali emersi dall’analisi del materiale raccolto nelle quattro classi. Il rapporto di ricerca si focalizza in particolare sui risultati emersi dalla somministrazione di questionari e compiti di discussione. L’analisi delle interviste familiari e dei video realizzati dai ragazzi sulla gestione dello spazio extra scolastico è in fase di realizzazione e sarà disponibile al termine dell’anno in corso. Prima di procedere alla discussione del materiale alcuni ringraziamenti sono doverosi. Questo lavoro è stato possibile grazie alla collaborazione di persone che a diverso titolo hanno sostenuto e partecipato al progetto. La sensibilità e la disponibilità da parte dei professori delle classi prime e quinte nelle diverse fasi della ricerca è stata ammirevole e particolarmente produttiva. In particolare intendo ringraziare le professoresse Savi, Cotti e Catalano e il professor Barbieri che hanno facilitato la raccolta dati nelle loro classi e favorito il contatto con alcune famiglie che sono state coinvolte nel progetto di ricerca con grande disponibilità. La preside e la professoressa Silvana Ferrari sono state interlocutrici fondamentali per un primo contatto con il corpo docente. Un sentito riconoscimento va anche alle famiglie che hanno dedicato tempo prezioso della loro vita domestica per svolgere l’intervista presso le loro abitazioni. I ragazzi, indiscussi protagonisti di questo lavoro, sono stati eccezionali: la loro motivazione, costanza e curiosità mi hanno colpito e stimolato per proseguire, con fiducia, i miei lavori di ricerca sulle sfide dell’adolescenza

Families under the microscope: observing interactional processes in family microtransitions

Families change throughout their life course according to both internal changes and transformations that occur in relation to the broader context in which they are connected. In particular, changes of any one family member, dyad, or triad may trigger disequilibration and re-organization of the whole family system (Cowan, 1991). Thus, how do such processes of change occur? Starting from this broad question, I have devised a research project that placed great effort in attempting to address this issue. Family change is at the core of my research interests. This notion has to be intended here in the specific declination of developmental transitions and, more precisely, as micro-transitions which occur in the everyday interactions among family members. I decided to situate the study of microtransitions in a particular moment of family development: adolescence. This choice functioned to provide a better understanding of the processes of change because in this period, several microtransitions are clustered at a given time. Interdisciplinarity is another fundamental characteristic of this research project, and all the disciplines considered share a systemic-constructionist orientation as a common background. In line with this, the main effort of my work was to devise methods consistent with this epistemological background. The structure of the entire research project, itself, is constructionist, in the sense that each of the three studies is built and emerges from the previous one as with “Chinese boxes.” More precisely, the results of one study serve as the starting point for new research questions, which are explored subsequently. We begin with the “biggest box”: Study 1. This study provides the methodological framework of the entire research project. Innovative observational procedures are devised to collect and analyze data; furthermore, the two constructs of oscillation and coordination are operationalized. Six families with at least an adolescent child (13-16 years) participated in this study. Study 2 involved another six families, and it is focused on the observation of emerging patterns of family interaction from the interlocking of oscillation with coordination. Four specific patterns are presented, which account for the different ways in which continuity and change develop during microtransitions. The last study, Study 3, is an attempt to focus the “lens” on the specific forms of sequential interactions family members displayed when talking about ongoing changes. The introduction of a new analytical procedure allowed for the study of the relational aspects of oscillation as the stance-taking process, which accounts for power dynamics displayed in the interaction among family members

The Subjective Evidence Based Ethnography (SEBE) for the study of ICTs-parents-adolescents' everyday interactions

A recent and comprehensive European report (see Livingstone et al., 2015) has highlighted that most studies on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have based their findings on quantitative and self-report methods, while few have included qualitative and ethnographically oriented methods. In fact, little is known about children’s actual practices with ICTs in their everyday life, i.e. when and how they use ICTs, for which purposes, in which moments of the day, etc. Guided by the idea that quantitative and self-report based methods provide only a partial view of a more complex dynamics concerning child-ICTs interaction, this contribution illustrates an innovative ethnographic method named Subjective Evidence-Based Ethnography (SEBE) (Lahlou et al., 2015). The potentials of SEBE for documenting children’s use of ICTs and their role in parent-child interaction and communication will be illustrated using video materials from an ongoing research project carried out with parents and their adolescent children (13-16 years) in Italy. The definition of methods anchored to adolescents’ actual practices in their everyday life can be particularly relevant for researchers interested in child development and family processes but also for educators and practitioners. SEBE is consistent with social constructionist theoretical approaches and activity theory, in particular. Its innovative nature allows the investigation of traditional research fields from a different perspective, never used before with children and their families