Young people’s ICT role at home—a descriptive study of young Finnish people’s ICT views in the home context

Abstract

For young people home is an increasingly important place to use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and to acquire new digital skills mainly by informal learning. In this study we focused on young people’s ICT activity in the home context to examine what kind of theoretical or practical added value as an analysis tool this factor can give for the studies concerning the relationship between young people and information and communication technology. Therefore we constructed a simple ICT role variable to describe young people’s ICT activity at home. In order to find out the expressive power and functionality of the new variable we used empirical data analysing young people’s personal qualities, external factors, ICT usage and ICT competence in the light of the ICT role at home. The research took 2 years (2005–2007) and its empirical data are based on the information given by the Finnish young at the age of about 14 in a geographically limited area. On the basis of the data the personal qualities of young people characterized a young person as an ICT expert at home better than the factors in his/her social and physical environments. The study revealed that the ICT role is a notable factor, when we want to learn more about the relationship between young people and ICT, for example, from the viewpoints of informal learning and diffusion of innovations and use or when we want to create a model of ICT usage or competence.