Social Work, Children and the Digital Knowledge Landscape: New Possibilities and Challenges

Abstract

Social work is a profession in movement within the surrounding society and political and policy decisions. Digitalization is ongoing and grows apace. We know that children use the Internet on a daily basis with a greater knowledge of and familiarity than many of the adults who are part of the children’s social networks. The Internet creates new opportunities for children to form and develop identities on a global level and at a distance from the adult world’s norms. Children’s use of the Internet can be empowering but may also be creating new vulnerabilities. This is a challenge for parents, social welfare services and society as a whole. However, when it comes to digitalization, in particular concerning children, welfare services in Nordic countries have been characterized by a certain inertia. Using interviews with social workers in Norway as a starting point, this chapter outlines, with a theoretical framing of the children/social media relation, the ways in which welfare state services in Nordic countries have become increasingly digitalized. It illustrates the tension between professional practice, governance and accountability when mediated by social workers’ engagement with digital systems. The findings show a contrast between the professional landscape and its controls and the digital one and its short-circuiting of these controls. The crucial question is how child welfare services will be able to cope with this in order to fulfil its societal mandate.