Chapter 1 provides an overview of screen time concerns reported in the media and research, with consideration of relevant learning and interaction theories which indicate that face-to-face social interaction, talk and play are essential for the linguistic and cognitive development of children. This chapter also revisits the fundamental multimodality of face-to-face interaction. The shift from face-to-face to online multimodal interaction therefore requires users to make complex linguistic and interactional adaptations to be able to achieve understanding and affiliation with interlocutors in online contexts, as occurred with the advent of the telephone. This is especially true of the most common form of online interaction, text chat, which is a unique hybrid form of social written interaction, with its own specific affordances and constraints for children’s social and linguistic development. This chapter presents key interactional differences between face-to-face and written online interaction, based on conversational resources available (or unavailable) to users in either setting, including videogame settings. This discussion provides a necessary basis for investigation of children’s written interaction in subsequent chapters.

Chapter 3 focuses on massively multiplayer online game and chat software Club Penguin that was popular with children until the desktop version was closed down in 2018. The chapter reveals unique aspects of Club Penguin chat environments, including evanescent posts which constrain interaction due to users’ lack of access to review of their conversation. The analysis of Club Penguin chat interaction distinguishes between open conversation, which is similar to ordinary conversation but in written form, role-play and more structured play-oriented social interaction, which is constrained by game rules. The chapter identifies available linguistic resources to ascertain their potential to create naturalistic conversational sequences and routines. The analysis of real life chats reveals that children use the restricted language creatively and effectively in social interaction and virtual play with other users, with greater variety of linguistic devices and negotiations evident in small group exchanges. Some of these exchanges include negotiations related to inclusion of other children, which suggest that this environment may provide opportunities for children’s social development, ideally under adult supervision. Linguistic analysis in fact indicates that despite the software’s linguistic restrictions, which are intended to promote safety, children’s safety can be elusive when users deploy ambiguous polysemic vocabulary.

In this chapter, analysis focuses principally on asynchronous substrand comments on an Ethan Gamer YouTube video, which are elicited by single main strand comments. Analysis reveals that in most instances, YouTube main and substrand comments interaction has a unique one-way structure, where comments by individual users are addressed mainly to the producer and participant of the video, in this case Ethan Gamer, or to the commenter who posts the main strand comment which elicits the substrand. While adjacency and sequence are disrupted by various software features in the main strand comments, sequentiality is adhered to in the substrand comments where users have access to meaningful written interaction and conversational sequences. However, Ethan Gamer’s replies to commenters’ posts are infrequent. Nonetheless, Ethan Gamer YouTube commenters use the substrand comments tool to connect with both unknown and familiar other users, engaging mainly in talk about gaming hardware, Ethan Gamer’s gameplay, and sometimes to clarify their actual age where adults’ accounts are being used to access YouTube. Nostalgic YouTube substrand posts may also comprise tellings, which suggest commenters’ social orientation through a search for commonality with other users.

This chapter applies principles outlined in previous chapters, especially Chapter 4 Videogame Talk, to understand group written interaction between Ethan Gamer and his fans, as visible on a public YouTube Minecraft gaming session. Unlike games such as FIFA where game objectives and points scoring dominate, Minecraft involves building digital environments, similar to Lego. The game software facilitates both written and spoken talk for the collaborative achievement of game activities, though survival and progression through levels are objectives in most Minecraft contexts. Analysis indicates that affiliative social talk, including reciprocal greetings, positive evaluations and smiley emoticons deployed by game participants promote a supportive gaming environment while also modeling prosocial affiliative gaming behaviours. Teamwork and problem-solving behaviours which scaffold game participants in their game play are also enacted frequently and reciprocally in text chat. These include requests or offers of assistance and advice giving related to the game-in-progress, including coordination of defensive actions as a result of a threat, which may require collaborative team work to progress the game. Both Ethan Gamer’s voice interaction and the group chat interactions promote a supportive prosocial environment which can be shared with all participants, including YouTube viewers.

Chapter 7 introduces the topic of online grooming of children, which is facilitated by text chat due to the anonymity it provides predators. It examines one published example of chat interaction between an identified offender and his young teenage victim, which provides new insights on the interactional behaviours of predators when attempting to groom children, in the early nonsexual stages of online relationships. The analysis of this single episode demonstrates that online predators may use self-disclosure and personal announcements intended to provoke interest and sympathy in their victims. This has the effect of the victim letting down her guard and submitting personal self-disclosures of her own. Specifically, initial grooming trajectories may include getting acquainted behaviours, small talk, troubles announcements, self-disclosures involving personal life, expression of feelings; requests for information about relationships and discussion of sexual interests. While not evident in the examined chat interaction, exchange of photographs is also known to be common. Chapter findings suggest that it may be possible to recognize online predators and protect children, in early nonsexual stages of grooming, though further conversation analytical research across a variety of contexts and age groups is urgently needed.