‘MSN was the Next Big Thing after Beanie Babies’: Children's Virtual Experiences as an Interface to Their Identities and Their Everyday Lives

Abstract

In this article the author explores the seamlessness between children's online and offline worlds. For children, there is no dichotomy of online and offline, or virtual and real; the digital is so much intertwined into their lives and psyche that the one is entirely enmeshed with the other. Despite early research pointing to the differences that mark the virtual as a space of ‘otherness’, the author suggests that the fabric of children's everyday lives knows no such distinct demarcation, and that what they do in their virtual worlds significantly affects how they connect to society. Moreover, through the virtual, children are simultaneously engaging in acts of self-reflection, self-fashioning and identity formation. Using data from a longitudinal ethnographic study of children online, the author illuminates a number of case studies which support this argument. She does this by using narrative accounts based on extensive interviews with the children.