Digital Care in Practice - How Children Seek (or Avoid) Intergenerational Social Support in Their Online Lives:A qualitative analysis of children’s problematic and positive experiences with parental involvement

This article draws on 85 episodic interviews with 171 Danish children in grades 3–4 and 7–8 to examine how children experience and navigate parental involvement in their online lives across early and late digital socialization. Using a grounded theory approach, we analyze when children seek or avoid adult support, how they experience being heard or sanctioned, and why many appear to reduce engagement with adults about online struggles after 3rd–4th grade.<br/><br/>Amid strong political and parental attention to online safety, limited research has addressed how emerging social norms and early digital experiences shape intergenerational dialogue. While children’s perspectives are often underrepresented in public debate, our data suggest that children actively manage both problematic and positive online experiences, frequently turning to peers and their own developing norms and technical competencies rather than adults.<br/><br/>The study develops the concepts of digital conversational gaps and trust gaps to explore how children’s rights and participation are enacted or constrained in everyday exchanges. Drawing on the Child and Adolescent Social Support model and extending the framework of Digital Care, the analysis identifies which forms of social support are present in children’s experiences and how these influence their willingness to engage in intergenerational conversations about digital episodes.