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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Media Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1426804

Human and Digital Ecosystems in the Modern Household

Provisionally accepted
Pam Briggs Pam Briggs James Nicholson James Nicholson *Rhian Lukins Rhian Lukins
  • Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Despite a growing number of studies describing the digital ecosystems of the home, few have explored the human component of this ecosystem and fewer have accounted for household and relationship diversity. We asked the inhabitants of nine households to share images of their digital devices and then interviewed them about how the technology was distributed and used, what roles they adopted in relation to the different devices and what boundaries or rules they set up to manage joint use. Following a thematic analysis, we describe (i) the digital components of the ecosystem and their use; (ii) the humans in the ecosystem and their relationships with technology and with each other, and (iii) interconnectedness in terms of joint use and self-or other-imposed restrictions. We use this data to describe dimensions against which households will meaningfully differ and suggest how these dimensions might be used to explore the implications of household and relationship diversity for future smarthome technologies.

    Keywords: smart homes, Internet of Things, Domestic technology, Families, Trust

    Received: 02 May 2024; Accepted: 03 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Briggs, Nicholson and Lukins. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: James Nicholson, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.