Understanding contemporary digital childhoods in Australia: A bounded scoping review of transdisciplinary research of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child

Abstract Childhoods are shaped by people, experiences, and contexts that, increasingly, include if and how children connect with digital technology. This scoping review, bounded by the research of a national Centre of Excellence that is currently the largest critical mass of transdisciplinary research about Australian digital childhoods, asked: What insights and understandings about contemporary digital childhoods in Australia can be drawn from the research of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child? Sixty-one studies (15 reviews and 46 primary studies) met the inclusion criteria of being a peer-reviewed publication of primary research or a structured review associated with the Centre. Results were synthesised in three clusters, derived from the trial of various inductive and deductive classification schemes, as (1) children ( k = 16), (2) children’s adults ( k = 30), and (3) surrounding systems that shape digital childhoods ( k = 15). Within-cluster inductive narrative synthesis enabled thematic analysis that accounted for the breadth of design, discipline, focus, and methodologies within the archive. Results offer novel transdisciplinary insights into areas including: child outcomes associated with use of digital technologies; knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and practices of children’s adults regarding digital technologies; and influence/s of systems that shape families’ digital engagement and experiences, including issues of political economy, datafication, privacy, rights, digital design, and digital inequalities. While bounded by a predefined (yet broad and responsive) program of Centre research, we identified thematic trends, consistencies, contradictions, and future agendas related to evolving digital childhoods in Australia that can inform ongoing research, policy and practice.