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Within the African continent, the growth and use of new media technologies such as mobile phones, social media and the Internet are steadily rising. Technology is changing the communicative and socio-political practices in many African countries. Despite this, there is little that is known about the impact of digital technology in everyday life of key populations, particularly young people and children. Using the internet and other technologies has become a common routine for many children and adolescents from high-income countries. Many children are accessing the internet at quite early ages, and mobile devices such as smartphones are becoming embedded in many children’s daily life, for education, socialisation, and play. With everyday life disrupted and almost ‘digital by default’, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed both the potentials of digital technology and the growing divide in access to and use of technology, skills and digital literacy across many parts of the world.
This paper, supported by the domestication and technology appropriation framework, focuses on a qualitative discussion of the ways in which rural and urban teens domesticate, appropriate and localize digital technologies that are available to them such as mobile phones, mobile internet, and social media. From a child-centered perspective, the paper utilized data from focus group interviews with teenagers in southeast and north central parts of Nigeria. It explores the circumstances whereby technology assumes the meanings and uses assigned to them by teens and the challenges they encounter in their negotiations with technology. The paper also exposes the challenge of digital literacy associated with children’s access to and use of technology and asserts the agency of children growing up in a digital world.