PlatFAMs: Platforming Families – tracing digital transformations in everyday life across generations

Digital platforms have penetrated deeply our everyday life, affecting people’s informal interactions, ways of living and understanding of the world, as well as the institutional structures that underpin these. Increasingly, digital platforms provide an infrastructure for learning, social connections, gaming, commerce and engagement with news, and their impact on homes and families was amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite growing research interest in the fundamental social, institutional and individual consequences of platformisation, we know less about how families are transforming with the everyday use of today’s heavily commercialised and globally networked platforms and their algorithms.

The PlatFAMs project focuses distinctively on intergenerational experiences in relation to the platformisation of family life. The core of the project is the study of up to one hundred three-generation families in five European countries (Norway, Estonia, UK, Romania and Spain) over a two-year period, across different spaces online and offline, using a broad range of qualitative and participatory methods. In addition, we will do secondary analysis of longitudinal quantitative data across European countries. The PlatFAMs project aims to understand how digital platforms are embedded in the lives and practices of modern families, raising key questions about conditions for informal learning, care and agency in family life today and consequences for the future.

Three thematic strands will be studied across families and generations. First, digital navigation and domestication; understood as the ways people interact with different platforms in order to identify inter-generational differences and similarities within diverse family structures. Second, digital negotiation and co-construction; understood as relational aspects within diverse family structures regarding connections and networking using digital platforms. Third, digital futuremaking as the process of anticipating and creating imaginaries of digital futures, both personal and societal, that shape present practices in ways that are consequential for families. At the intersection of perspectives from intergenerational research, family and youth studies, learning and literacy research, the project will bring cutting edge perspectives on the domestication and social impact of digital platforms to the field.

KEYWORDS:

families, digital platforms, generations, parenting, navigation, negotiation, futuremaking, european

CONSORTIUM

  • Project Leader: Ola Erstad, University of Oslo, Department of Education, Norway, e-mail
  • Veronika Kalmus, University of Tartu, Institute of Social Studies, Estonia, e-mail
  • Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Department of Media and Communications, United Kingdom, e-mail
  • Oana Benga, Universitatea Babes Bolyai/Babes-Bolyai University, Department of Psychology, Romania
  • Moises Esteban-Guitart, University of Girona, Institute of Educational Research, Spain, e-mail
  • Raquel Miño-Puigcercós, University of Barcelona, Department of Didactics and Educational Organization, Spain, e-mail

COOPERATION PARTERS

  • Julianne Moss, Deakin University, Australia
  • Varje Ojala, Estonian Union for Child Welfare
  • Kerli Koiv, Association of Estonian Open Youth Centres
  • Ramon Tremosa i Balcells, Government of Catalonia
  •  Tone Haugan-Hepsø, Norwegian Media Authority
  • Anca Gaidoș, New Horizons Foundation
  • Kristin Ruud, Seniornett
  • Vicki Shotbolt, ParentZone
  •  Elisabeth Gosme, COFACE Families Europe
  • Morten Søby, Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training
  •  Monica Nadal Anmella, Fundacio BOFILL

EFFECTS & ACHIEVEMENTS

Project achievements:

My wife got lost while driving a few times. But if I can check this app, I know where she is. I can tell her where she needs to go.

Bertil (78), grandfather, Norway

What place do digital platforms hold in families, and what do they mean for relationships between generations?

Background and context

Digital platforms such as social media, messaging services, and apps that help us organize family life have taken on an increasingly central role in our daily routines. Digital platforms are mediators of online content, with design and user interfaces that enable interaction between algorithms, data, and content created by users. Research examining how families’ daily lives and relationships have hanged due to the use of platforms and their algorithms is lacking. PlatFAMs studied how the immersiveness of digital platforms has contributed to changing our family lives – for children, parents, and grandparents. The study was conducted in Norway, UK, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and Spain.

Objectives and methodology

The PlatFAMs project aimed to understand first, how family generations navigate and experience the platformisation of family life, second, the negotiations and consequences for relationships between generations with their use of platforms, and third, how they understand the platformed future for families. We collected 313 stories about everyday life with digital platforms from 103 three-generation families (children, parents, and grandparents) across six European countries. Ten families were followed up to dig deeper into generational differences, and to collaborate on designing their own ‘Perfect Family App’. In addition, we used a European quantitative dataset with information about children and their parents (EU Kids Online 2018).

Key findings and impact

As more aspects of family life move onto platforms and are shaped by algorithms, family members’ different roles and responsibilities shift. We found that families view digital platforms as a future infrastructure for communication and care, while still believing that face-to-face interaction is irreplaceable. Many describe a sense of powerlessness toward Big Tech companies, along with concerns about privacy, data storage and algorithms. Clear generational patterns emerged: grandparents are ‘partially platformised’, parents form a ‘transitional generation’ that sets the platform rules in the family, and children and adolescents represent the ‘future platformised generation’ – active but bound by family norms.

Ambivalence is pervasive: platforms bring the family together but also segment members into different ‘realities’. They enable care across long distances, while attention and face-to-face interaction without platforms remain most important for those living together. Streaming platforms are part of many families’ routines – for example, weekend TV evenings – and help strengthen family bonds.

At the same time, platforms rely on individualised interfaces and profiles that may undermine a shared ‘family time’. Mutual tracking and monitoring among family members is largely normalised and described as care and safety, rooted in mistrust of the outside world or in mutual relational trust and openness. Local parenting norms shape platform use differently across countries.

The project has brought nuanced understanding of key aspects of how platforms influence families; through survelliance, intimacy, care and relational agency. Results increase NGOs’ development of strategies towards better understanding of how generations deal with and use the affordances of platforms and apps. The social impact on social institutions other than the family will also be apparent, such as education, health. Recognising these patterns will help families and policymakers support safer, more inclusive and balanced practices.

PlatFAMs has resulted in a book on the platformisation of the family, a family game designed to stimulate discussion about dilemmas and paradoxes inherent in their digital everyday lives, and numerous scientific articles in leading journals. Project website: https://digitalfamilies.eu/

Publications:

  • Erstad, O., Livingstone, S., Hegna, K., Stoilova, M., Negru-Subțirică, O., How digital technologies become embedded in family life across generations: scoping the agenda for researching ‘platformised relationality’, Families, Relationships and Societies, 2024, https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journals/frs/13/2/article-p164.xml
  • Erstad, O., Kalmus, V., Livingstone, S., Benga, O., Esteban-Guitart, M., Miño-Puigcercós, R., Family Life with Digital Platforms, 2024
  • Erstad, O. Esteban-Guitart, M. Miño-Puigcercós, R., Project PlatFAMs. Platforming Families – tracing digital transformations in everyday life across generations, Journal article, Culture and Education/Cultura y Educación, 2024
  • Erstad, O., The Platformization of the Family: Towards a Research Agenda, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-74881-3
  • Erstad, O., Livingstone, S., Introduction, in: The Platformization of the Family: Towards a Research Agenda, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-74881-3_1
  • Livingstone, S., The Platformization of the Family, in: The Platformization of the Family: Towards a Research Agenda, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-74881-3_2
  • Hegna, K., Stoilova, M., The Home as a Site of Platformization, in: The Platformization of the Family: Towards a Research Agenda, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-74881-3_3
  • Siibak, A., How the Family Makes Itself: The Platformization of Parenting in Early Childhood, in: The Platformization of the Family: Towards a Research Agenda, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-74881-3_4
  • Miño-Puigcercós, R., Membrive, A., Researching the Platformization of the Family: Methodological Challenges, in: The Platformization of the Family: Towards a Research Agenda, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-74881-3_5
  • Erstad, O., Conclusion: Towards Further Research into the Platformization of the Family, in: The Platformization of the Family: Towards a Research Agenda, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-74881-3_6
  • Esteban-Guitart, M., Learning as Life Project(s), Learning: Research and Practice, Routledge, 2023, 10(1), https://doi.org/10.1080/23735082.2023.2291010
  • Erstad, O., Esteban-Guitart, M., Parcerisa, L., An Ecological Approach to Platformised Family Lives, New Media & Society, SAGE, 2026
  • Kalmus, V., Benga, O., Esteban-Guitart, M., Nordtug, M., Operman, S., Stoilova, M., Mone, I.-S., Born, V. de Leon, Doing Media Generations within and across European Families: Towards “Platformised Generations”?, New Media & Society, SAGE, 2026
  • Livingstone, S., Siibak, A., Negru-Subtirica, O.-M., “It’s Just Second Nature to Do WhatsApp”: Kinkeeping and Boundary Work by Multigenerational Families in the Platform Society, New Media & Society, SAGE, 2026
  • Siibak, A., Stoilova, M., Susa-Erdogan, G. N., Malo, S., Lozano Mulet, P., Platforms That Bind: The Transformation of Intimacy in Three-Generation European Families, New Media & Society, SAGE, 2026
  • Miño-Puigcercós, R., Hegna, K., Nordtug, M., Jacovkis, J., Born, V. de Leon, The Normalisation of Family Interveillance: Platformed Location Tracking in Three-Generation Families in Norway and Spain, New Media & Society, SAGE, 2026
  • Nordtug, M., Medrea, F.-L., Vargas, P. R., Herrera, G., Hortmann, J. L., “It’s a Battle to Agree on Something”: Doing Family in the Age of Streaming Platforms, New Media & Society, SAGE, 2026
  • Nordtug, M., The Platformization of Family Health: How the Family’s Roles in Matters of Health are Shaped with Digital Platforms, New Media & Society, SAGE, 2026
  • Staksrud, E., Wired Together or Pulled Apart? Parent-Child Digital Dynamics of Family Life in Europe, New Media & Society, SAGE, 2026
  • Erstad, O., Living and Learning with Techno-Cultural Mediatization, Technology as Cultural Mediator, Springer, Cham, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-97673-5_5
  • Malo, S., Largo, M., Herrera, G., Silva, C. R., Learning and Mediation in the Use of Digital Platforms in Intergenerational Families in Spain, Digital Education Review, University of Barcelona, vol. 48, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1344/der.2026.48.16-35
  • Miño-Puigcercós, R., Jacovkis, J., Parcerisa, L., Lozano Mulet, P., From Individual Resignation to Collective Action: Families’ Critical Literacy in the Face of Data Surveillance, Digital Education Review, University of Barcelona, vol. 48, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1344/der.2026.48.55-68
  • Operman, S., Männiste, M., Membrive, A., Largo, M., Imagining Family Futures: Narratives of Digital Life in a Platformed World, New Media & Society, SAGE, 2026
  • Esteban-Guitart, M., Malo, S., Membrive, A., Largo, M., Joint Family Media Engagement Events in the Platformised Society: A Case Study, Mediekultur, 2026
  • Hegna, K., Jaavall, J. F., Autonomy Support and Social Media: The Role of Parental Mediation and Deference Monitoring, Mediekultur, 2026
  • Esteban-Guitart, M., Miño-Puigcercós, R., Lozano Mulet, P., Special Issue: The Platformization of Formal and Informal Contemporary Educational Contexts, Digital Education Review, vol. 48, 2026, https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/der/issue/view/3286
  • Hegna, K., Nordtug, M., Membrive, A., Doing Family with Digital Platforms, Mediekultur, 2026
  • Erstad, O., Kalmus, V., Livingstone, S., Hegna, K., Siibak, A., Special Issue: Platformization and New Domesticated Interactions, New Media & Society, 2026
  • Hegna, K., Born, V. de Leon, Platformization of Intensive Parenting: The Dual Nature of Relational Trust, Journal of Youth Research, 2026
  • Hegna, K., Nordtug, M., Gaming Across Generations: How Digital Platforms Afford Intergenerational Play, Media, Culture and Society, 2026
  • Nordtug, M., Grandparenting in the Age of Digital Platforms, 2026
  • Erstad, O., Livingstone, S., Hegna, K., Stoilova, M., Negru-Subtirica, O.-M., How Digital Technologies Become Embedded in Family Life across Generations: Scoping the Agenda for Researching ‘Platformised Relationality’, Families, Relationships and Societies, Bristol University Press, vol. 13, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1332/20467435Y2024D000000023

 Start date

1 October 2022

Project duration

36 months

 Project budget

€ 1 497 042

Funding organisations