Chapter 2 provides an overview of how emoticons and emojis are a human adaptation to online written conversation to compensate for the absence of non-verbal cues and physical context, but also an affordance of most written conversation to promote affiliation, creativity and play. The analysis highlights the role of emojis as ‘attendant activities’ (Jefferson, 1987) which express politeness (and impoliteness) and other pragmatic functions, including prosocial and anti-social behaviours, identities, contextualizations (physical/virtual), irony and meaning enhancement. By analysing the multiple, often overlapping interactional functions of emoticons and emojis, this chapter provides original insights into the unique role of emojis in children’s written conversation, highlighting some major differences between spoken and written interaction. Findings indicate that emojis fulfil interactional functions which go beyond simply replacing fundamental non-verbal, voice and contextual resources which are available to speakers in phone and face-to-face interaction. While further research in this area is required across different age groups and genders, the various categories of emojis identified in this chapter provide a comprehensive account of how children are likely to deploy and respond to these symbols in online interaction, and how multiple meanings are possible depending on the interactional context

Chapter 8 summarizes findings and reviews the implications of previous chapters, including health and safety considerations related to screen time and online interaction. Specifically, it recapitulates guidelines on how to fit gaming and written online interaction into children’s lives in a balanced, principled way, to promote safe, collaborative learning with other children and adults. These guidelines also summarize previously discussed criteria for selecting and setting up appropriate videogame and social media interaction to maximize learning benefits and safety. These include the introduction of developmental guidelines and goals for video games, as there are for children’s books, to provide appropriate scaffolded support for children, including for the development of children’s first and additional languages. Suggestions for conducting further research using conversation analysis in this area are also discussed, to cover a range of similar digital contexts and age groups.

Based on insights from previous research, Chapter 4 introduces the language and complex interactional structure of video game interaction, including both online and offline elements. While the chapter identifies multiple combinations and configurations of gaming interaction which are available to children, most research studies are focused on co-located collaborative gaming, where children game side by side rather than at a distance. The chapter develops an analytical framework based on conversation analysis principles, which is applicable to most games, and which is the basis for analysis of Minecraft text chat in Chapter 5. This framework considers interactivity as a social rather than technical accomplishment, to assess videogames’ potential to promote children’s learning through interaction. This chapter includes an analysis of the language used when co-present gamers play face-to-face, which reveals that despite its interactional complexity, gaming language is often linguistically limited, as imperative forms, instructions, exclamations and interjections constitute most of the language used by gamers. This language may however be valuable to children for game-related problem solving and relationship building. It is also an opportunity for authentic language practice on specific language learning objectives where gamers are using a second language.

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.