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The discrepancy between children's actual amount of viewing time and parents' accounts of their concerns, rules, and parental mediation choices has been documented in empirical research, and typically interpreted through the lens of the Uses and Gratifications theory - showing how parents change their attitudes towards screen media in order to satisfy their own needs. Based on a qualitative longitudinal research project, including app-based media diaries, with 20 families with at least one child aged eight or younger, we aim to make two contributions to the literature. With regard to theory, we aim to highlight the heterogeneous and contingent ways of balancing the place of digital media in children's lives that arise from parents navigating screen time discourses, social pressures, and daily schedules. With regard to methods, we argue for the combination of qualitative data and app-based media diaries to contextualise and interpret potential discrepancies between reported screen time and parental anxieties or hopes about digital media.

The report is part of a larger qualitative study conducted in 16 European countries which aims at exploring the experiences with digital technologies of children aged 6-12 years during the COVID-19 lockdown, as well as their parents' perceptions. This country report from Italy is based on data collected by interviewing 5 families with at least one child between 6 and 12 years old.

Our review of the MeTag app and the MeTagAnalyze web app is based on an initial test project involving undergraduate students, and, later, its adoption as part of a mixed-methods longitudinal research project on the datafication of childhood and family life. We contextualise the value of media diaries as a research tool in phenomenological and user-centred research traditions, namely the Domestication of Technology approach and the constructivist mediatization research tradition. Based on our preliminary findings and these theoretical frameworks, we highlight the main methodological advantages of the MeTag app for researchers who aim for a nuanced understanding of media practices and communication repertoires within different contexts and across various timeframes.

Italy was the first country in Europe to implement a nationwide lockdown. Children and their families lived in nearly complete isolation for almost two months. Students missed 65 days of school compared to an average of 27 missed days among high-income countries worldwide. This prolonged break is of concern, as even short breaks in schooling can cause significant loss of learning for children and lead to educational inequalities over time. At least 3 million Italian students may not have been reached by remote learning due to a lack of internet connectivity or devices at home. This report explores children’s and parents’ experiences of remote learning during the lockdown in Italy, drawing on data collected from 11 European countries (and coordinated by the European Commission’s Joint Research Center). It explores how children's access and use of digital technologies changed during the pandemic; highlights how existing inequalities might undermine remote learning opportunities, even among those with internet access; and provides insights on how to support children’s remote learning in the future.

Based on the Italian data from a four country qualitative research (Australia, Belgium, Italy and the UK) carried out with children aged 8-to-10-years-old, the paper analyses the domestication of Cozmo, a social robotic toy. Robotic toys are conceptualised through the lens of the domestication of technology and drawing on the concept of “affordances-in-practice” (Costa, 2018) – that is, as the ongoing and always situated enactments of the properties of technological artefacts through practices of use-in-context. in order to investigate the digitalmaterial assemblage of the robotic toy, children’s play practices, parents’ and children’s imaginaries of social robots, a child-centred qualitative research has been designed, which involved two family visits and engaged parents and children as co-researchers. Parents were asked to film their children’s interactions with Cozmo in between visits, whereas children co-constructed the stoy of Cozmo through the Book Creator app. Findings show how children enact the affordances of Cozmo based on its anthopomorfisation. More specifically, they enact its liveliness (through practices of care such as feeding the robot) and its affective stickiness (through the actualisation of an emotional bond). Less practised, instead, is the affordance of programmability..

The appropriation of internet-connected robots in the domestic context Based on the Italian data from a four country qualitative research (Australia, Belgium, Italy and the UK) carried out with children aged 8-to-10-years-old, the paper analyses the domestication of Cozmo, a social robotic toy. Robotic toys are conceptualised through the lens of the domestication of technology and drawing on the concept of “affordances-in-practice” (Costa, 2018) – that is, as the ongoing and always situated enactments of the properties of technological artefacts through practices of use-in-context. in order to investigate the digital- material assemblage of the robotic toy, children’s play practices, parents’ and children’s imaginaries of social robots, a child-centred qualitative research has been designed, which involved two family visits and engaged parents and children as co-researchers. Parents were asked to film their children’s interac- tions with Cozmo in between visits, whereas children co-constructed the stoy of Cozmo through the Book Creator app. Findings show how children enact the affordances of Cozmo based on its anthopomorfisation. More specifically, they enact its liveliness (through practices of care such as feeding the robot) and its affective stickiness (through the actualisation of an emotional bond). Less practised, instead, is the affordance of programmability.