Daniella Bendo - Böcker

Rather than asking whether digital technologies are simply good or bad for youth, Enmeshed Realities examines how young people actively inhabit, traverse, and negotiate digital ecologies: the interconnected, enmeshed online and offline worlds that shape everyday life. Responding to dominant moral panics and risk-focused narratives that frame youth as vulnerable or “up to no good” online, the book shifts attention away from fear-based discourses towards young people’s own perspectives and experiences. The book adopts a youth-centered, mixed-methods approach, grounded in surveys, focus groups, and interviews with fifteen-to-seventeen-year-old young people living in and around Ottawa, Canada. Exploring four key thematic areas, it specifically examines how digital ecologies shape young people’s experiences of identity and belonging, loneliness and the fear of missing out, relationships and dating, and family life. Across these domains, young people describe digital ecologies as spaces of both pleasure and difficulty, as well as connection and tension. Child and youth studies researchers Daniella Bendo and Dale Spencer conclude that understanding young people’s digital lives requires moving beyond simplistic narratives of harm towards nuanced, good-faith engagement with their lived realities.

Inspired by narratives on children’s rights, participation and social action, Children as Change Makers aids in creating active learning opportunities that will equip students in higher and further education, as well as practitioners and professionals to meaningfully get involved in community change projects that effectively partner with children and young people.The chapters reignite a call for a paradigm shift in society, arguing that children’s social engagement is key to navigating local and global change. It invites adults to advance their thinking by reflecting on and revisiting the way they view children as participants (especially children under the age of 12 years old). Drawing on the multidisciplinary field of Childhood and Youth Studies, Sam Frankel and Daniella Bendo call for a unity of thought that equips children and young people as ‘participants’ to be a catalyst for a shared vision that recognises the social, environmental, economic and health challenges in communities.Children as Change Makers will increase children’s, students, and practitioners’ confidence by engaging with guidance, practical examples and activities to strengthen collaborative opportunities with children. Drawing on a new innovative active learning approach, this book aims to bolster academic, professional and community learning opportunities and create experiences that contribute to life skills, career ambitions, and goals.