Chinese children’s perspectives of long-distance familyhood via WeChat

ABSTRACT

There is growing public concern in China about the large number of children whose parents have left them behind because of massive rural-to-urban labor migration over the past few decades. It is estimated that there were 61 million left-behind children in China in 2018. Because of the prevalence of instant communication applications, such as WeChat, left-behind children in China can maintain family relationships with their migrant parents through social media. This study examines how left-behind children use WeChat to sustain long-distance family relationships. Conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, the research involved online interviews with ten children and ten online workshops with thirty-one child participants. The data collected from the workshops and interviews suggest that a gap still exists between children’s communication needs and the technological affordances of social media. Mediated communications via WeChat are not always child-friendly and can have implications for the success or failure of parent-child communication in Chinese separated families. Despite these challenges, children demonstrate creativity in navigating the uncertainties of long-distance communication and relationships. However, this process is strewn with difficulties that the adult family members in the participant families have overlooked.

IMPACT SUMMARY

Prior State of Knowledge: Studies of multi-local families have traditionally concentrated on migrant parents; far less research has examined the perspectives of children. In particular, very little research has focused on the perspectives via social media of children in families across large distances.

Novel Contributions: This study identifies three important aspects that matter to children’s experiences of long-distance familyhood. They are children’s media literacy, difficulties, and creativity. The research design advocates for child-centered approaches and caters to children’s attention spans, communication skills, and literacy levels.

Practical Implications: This study demonstrates that children’s difficulties in online communication have been overlooked. By considering children’s unique communication needs, parents, carers, and platform designers can work together to create more child-friendly communication environments and facilitate children’s digital engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Left-behind children
• WeChat
• mediated communication
• family relationships
• Chinese separated families

Introduction

Social media in the context of rural-to-urban migration in China

Rural-to-urban migration characterizes internal migration in China, because the majority of the migrant population consists of so-called nonmingong (agricultural migrant workers), who were once agricultural workers and have since migrated to cities to take on non-agricultural jobs. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the total number of migrant workers reached 292.51 million in 2021 (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2021). This rapid surge in migration only became a highly visible phenomenon in China after the 1980s as a result of economic reforms and rapid urbanisation (Liu et al., 2018). As a result of the massive scale of parental migration, the so-called left-behind children phenomenon has attracted enormous public and scholarly attention.

The term “left-behind children” refers to people under the age of 18, who live in rural areas and whose father and/or mother have migrated to other places in China to work for an extended period (Yeoh & Lam, 2007). Murphy (2020) describes several types of care arrangements among Chinese separated families: “mother at home, father out” families; “lone-migrant mother, at-home father” families; and “skipped-generation” families involving care by grandparents (p. 5). Children living with grandparents or with a stay-behind parent is the most common arrangement (Ye et al., 2005). According to data collected by the All-China Women’s Federation, grandparents cared for one-third of left-behind children in Chinese families in which both parents had migrated (All China Women’s Federation Research Group (ACWF), 2013, p. 31).

The restrictions of the hukou system, a household registration system in place in China since 1958, which perpetuates the rural-urban division of the country, have exacerbated the so-called left-behind children phenomenon (Fan, 2007). The hukou system stipulates that public schools in Chinese cities admit children based on their registered location of residence (Ma et al., 2018; Zhou et al., 2019). Under these admission regulations, migrant children and their families are left with three options. First, children of temporary migrants are often denied access to urban schools or are enrolled with additional charges (Chen & Liang, 2007; Wong et al., 2007). Second, even though migrant children can choose to attend these private schools between the ages of 12 and 16, these children must cease their education in Chinese cities after middle school graduation, because they are not permitted to take the college entrance examination outside their hukou registration locations. As a result of these institutional barriers, many migrant parents must resort to the third option, which is to leave their children behind.

During family separation, social media play an important role in helping Chinese left-behind children sustain emotional links with their migrant parents. It is worth noting that the Great Firewall, the Chinese government’s censorship infrastructure, blocks a variety of foreign websites and platforms (Roberts, 2018). As a result, popular communication platforms apps, such as WhatsApp and Skype, are not accessible in China. This market dynamic allows domestic social media platforms to hold a monopoly on the digital landscape in China. WeChat, for example, is the most used app in China and has the largest number of downloads and users since 2013 (Kuang, 2017). In addition to the common affordances available on a messaging app, such as text messaging, voice messaging, and video calls, WeChat also offers services, such as online payment, news subscriptions, and e-commerce. It constantly adds new affordances to attract more users.

Mediated communication among Chinese separated families involves the unintended impact of regulatory policies on digital usage among children who depend on WeChat to maintain family relationships across distance. According to the Cybersecurity Law promulgated in 2016, telecom service providers are required to register the ID information of their users. Only those who register with their real names can continue to use their internet plans. To comply with this policy, WeChat requires users to verify their real identities and thus ensures that the account holder is the actual user. Without real-name registration, a child user cannot independently register a WeChat account and have it verified. This implies that media access becomes an issue for left-behind children, many of whom need to rely on their carers to access WeChat. Maintaining familial bonds across distance involves three parties: parents, children, and carers.¹ This dynamic can be viewed as one of the key characteristics of mediated communication within Chinese separated families.

Addressing the gap in the research on migration, media, and children

The literature on multi-local families has emphasised the adult experience, including practices of transnational caring (Ahlin, 2018; Baldassar, 2016; Baldassar & Merla, 2015), transnational mothering (Madianou & Miller, 2012; Parreñas, 2005), and transnational intergenerational relations (King O’Riain, 2015; Marino, 2019). One strand of the literature on transnational families is more optimistic about the merits of distant co-presence facilitated by communication technologies. For example, as Baldassar et al. (2016) argue, the proliferation of communication technologies has begun to challenge the idea that core relationships require face-to-face interactions. They also dispute the tendency to privilege physical co-presence, that is, to view it as more authentic than remote co-presence (see also Baldassar, 2007, 2016). Within an emerging environment of proliferating communicative opportunists (Madianou & Miller, 2012), transnational families now exploit the affordances of each available medium, also known as polymedia, to meet their relational and emotional needs (Madianou & Miller, 2012). Further nuances have been identified regarding the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the experience and practice of relationships. For example, a webcam can help transnational families to “de-intensify emotional interaction” by keeping the webcam on all day and enabling long-distance emotional interaction (King O’Riain, 2015, p. 257).

A salient feature of the existing literature on rural-to-urban migration in China is the relative lack of attention given to the role of communication technologies. According to a non-governmental organisation’s white paper on left-behind children in China, more than half of left-behind children communicate with their parents at least twice a week. In fact, 24% of them contact their parents daily via phone or the internet (On the Road to School, 2015). Although social media have become a major means of long-distance communication among Chinese migrant families (Sheng, 2019), little research has focused on understanding family lives through the lens of social media. One of the few studies on this subject, conducted by Gan (2021), examines the use of video-mediated communication in migrant families with young children (ages three and under) and highlights the role of grandparents in facilitating the interaction between young children and their remote parents.

However, we still know little about how children navigate the “polymediatic environment” of digital media (Merla & Papanikolaou, 2021, p. 119). The lack of social cues, such as physical context, bodily movements, and facial expressions, which ordinarily provide context about the meaning of messages, impedes the maintenance of interpersonal relationships through digital media (Baym, 2010). The extant literature suggests that language-based media, such as telephones or video-calling platforms, are not ideally designed for children, because more developed conversational skills are required to maintain communication (Ballagas et al., 2009; Bruner, 1966; Raffle et al., 2010). Bruner (1966) suggests that children, in general, find it easier to express their knowledge and ideas through action than through words. Therefore, any medium that allows children to “leverage action, bodily movement, or imagery” seems to be more child-friendly (Ballagas et al., 2009, p. 322).

The reason why children’s digital practices are under-researched is rooted in the fact that children’s access to digital devices cannot always be guaranteed. This is because children traditionally lack the power to make decisions in the home (Livingstone, 2002). Literature also suggests that parents do not perceive privacy as important for young children, whether this pertains to physical space or personal matters (McKinney, 1998; Parke & Sawin, 1979). The conceptual development of sociology and social anthropology has changed this perception and treatment of children (e.g., Allison, 2007, 2009; Qvortrup, 2009; Wyness, 2019), which has led to an interdisciplinary dialogue and the emergence of childhood studies as a growing field of research. Emphasising children’s agency and its theoretical and empirical implications, childhood studies focus particularly on children’s agency in decision-making processes. Thus, they advocate for their participation and the recognition of their voices by parents, policymakers and practitioners (Tisdall & Bell, 2006).

By highlighting children’s agency, this study addresses the research gap in the extant literature, specifically the absence of children’s perspectives in the research related to migration, family, and media studies. Employing child-centered approaches, such as creative workshops and child-focused interviews, this study seeks to answer the following research questions:

RQ1:

What is the level of children’s competence in using WeChat, and how does it affect their experiences of maintaining family relationships?

RQ2:

What difficulties do children encounter when communicating with their parents via WeChat?

RQ3:

How do children overcome the challenges arising from mediated communication?

Method

The research setting

This article is derived from a larger research project²that aims to provide a comprehensive picture of long-distance familyhood in Chinese separated families from the perspectives of parents, carers, and children. This study employs mixed methods to understand the relationship between WeChat usage and the family lives of Chinese separated families. The methods include an online parental survey; semi-structured interviews with migrant parents, carers, and schoolteachers; child-focused interviews; and creative online workshops.

The data collection was moved online in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. All participants were recruited from a case study primary school in F city, located in the Liaoning province of Northeast China. The school enrols students aged seven to thirteen from F city and the surrounding rural areas. There are two types of students at M school: day students and boarders. Day students reside in F city and commute daily, whereas boarders, typically rural pupils, visit home on weekends. The school was selected as a case study for two reasons: 1) its location in F city, where adjacent rural areas have experienced years of drought, forcing peasants to become migrant workers to support their families; 2) since 2006, the school transformed into a boarding school and began providing dorms for rural students, thus reflecting the increasing population of left-behind children in F city.

Research design

This study employed creative workshops and child-centered interviews to investigate children’s digital practices in parent-child communication. These two methods complement each other, because workshops capture a variety of children’s perspectives, whereas interviews are useful for exploring children’s individual experiences. Creative workshops encourage children to convey their thoughts and understandings through playful activities (Jackson et al., 2008), thus making them particularly useful for engaging children and prompting responses during the remote research. Because of the online setting, the format of both the workshops and interviews was amended to accommodate children’s attention spans, articulation skills, and literacy levels. Notes were taken during workshops and interviews, which were both video and audio recorded. The data were transcribed after the completion of each session. All creative work produced was collected with the assistance of teachers and carers, who were present during the workshops and interviews. The researcher then digitally documented the work.

With the consents of parents and children, each workshop was broken down into smaller sessions, each lasting no more than 10 minutes. A schoolteacher, who was always present, assisted and helped with the logistical arrangements. Because the workshops took place at the school where pupils are not allowed to use digital devices, workshop participants took part in the research via a laptop provided by the school. The children used a video conference platform called Tencent Meeting, which was the only conferencing software available on the school device.

To reflect the research questions, the discussions were structured around two themes – media practices and long-distance communication. To engage children in the research process and to help them feel at ease, a role-playing game was incorporated during the break (five minutes) and a pen-and-paper exercise at the end of the workshop (five minutes). The role-playing game invited each child participant to act out a scenario in which a parent who was working elsewhere returned home. The child participants were encouraged to assume one of three roles: the child, the parent, and the carer. This activity allowed children to recall a family reunion scene by interacting with their peers who shared similar family-separation experiences. It enabled the researcher to observe the family dynamic from a child’s perspective.

In addition, there was a pen-and-paper exercise, in which each child was given a notepad to write down two things they often wished to tell their parent(s) but had never had the chance. This activity displayed the things that children valued and also the limitations of long-distance communication, because it revealed topics that children might not have discussed in online interactions with their parents. This method also effectively elicited the voices of young children, who might struggle with understanding research questions, by allowing them to express their thoughts through drawings if writing proved difficult. It also permitted the verbal clarification of questions as needed.

Each interviewee was invited to participate in two interview sessions. With the consent of parents, carers, and children, each session was conducted in the presence of carers and lasted no longer than 45 minutes. The involvement of carers ensured that the research process was ethically responsible and did not induce anxiety in the children. The first interview focused on exploring the child’s knowledge of WeChat functionalities. To this end, five digital activities were designed to understand how the children used WeChat and to learn more about their digital skills. Before the first session, each child was invited to send the researcher 1) a voice message, 2) a text message, 3) a sticker, 4) a picture, and 5) a short video through WeChat. The second interview session centered on their experiences with using WeChat to communicate with their parents. Because most child interviewees did not have their own digital devices, carers were asked to help facilitate the online interviews by giving the children access to their mobile phones and WeChat accounts. With the consent of parents, children, and carers, the interviews were conducted via WeChat on their carers’ phone – the same platform used for parent-child online communication.

Participants

The general criterion for recruiting child participants was children who have migrant parent(s) and attend the case study school. Ten creative workshops were conducted with thirty-one children, who were recruited from a screener survey incorporated into a parental survey. The rationale for selecting workshop participants was based on the feasibility of undertaking remote research. Because workshops took place during the week at school, it was practical to choose participants from the same class, because they likely had similar schedules. Consequently, classes with at least three willing children from the name list were selected (see Table 1).

Table 1. Profile of workshop participants.

No.	Age	Gender	Carer(s)	Digital Device	WeChat Account
W1	12	F	Paternal grandparents	Smartphone	Yes
W2	12	F	Paternal grandparents	Smartphone	Yes
W3	12	M	Paternal grandparents	Smartphone	Yes
W4	12	M	Paternal grandparents	No	No
W5	11	M	Father	No	No
W6	10	F	Father	No	No
W7	11	F	Mother & paternal grandmother	No	No
W8	12	M	Aunt	Smartphone	Yes
W9	10	F	Mother	Smartphone	No
W10	10	F	Maternal grandparents	No	No
W11	11	M	Mother	Smartphone	No
W12	12	M	Paternal grandparents	No	No
W13	11	M	Maternal grandparents	No	No
W14	12	F	Mother	Smartphone	Yes
W15	12	M	Mother	Smartphone	Yes
W16	12	M	Mother	Smartphone	Yes
W17	11	M	Mother	No	No
W18	11	M	Mother	No	No
W19	11	M	Mother	No	No
W20	10	M	Mother	No	No
W21	9	F	Mother	No	No
W22	10	F	Mother	No	No
W23	13	M	Mother	Smartphone	Yes
W24	12	F	Mother	Smartphone	No
W25	13	F	Mother	Smartphone	No
W26	13	F	Maternal grandparents	Smartphone	Yes
W27	11	F	Paternal grandparents	No	No
W28	10	F	Paternal grandparents	Smartphone	No
W29	9	M	Mother	No	No
W30	9	F	Mother	Smartwatch	No
W31	9	F	Mother	No	No

In terms of child-focused interviews, 10 child participants were identified and selected from participant families whose parents and carers had been interviewed as respondents (see Table 2).

Table 2. Profile of interview participants.

No.	Gender	Age	Carer(s)	Digital Device	WeChat Account	Matched Interview
I1	M	13	Maternal grandmother & aunt	No	Yes	Maternal grandmother
I2	M	13	Maternal grandmother & aunt	No	Yes	Mother
I3	M	13	Paternal grandparents	No	No	Mother
I4	F	11	Paternal grandmother	No	No	Mother
I5	F	13	Paternal grandmother	No	Yes	Mother
I6	M	10	Paternal grandmother	No	No	Father
I7	F	8	Paternal grandfather	No	No	Mother
I8	M	9	Paternal grandmother	No	No	Paternal grandmother
I9	F	12	Care center, aunt & brother	Smartphone	Yes	Brother
I10	M	11	Maternal/paternal grandparents	No	No	Mother

Data analysis

Because of the lack of theoretical work concerning children’s perception of family life in the digital age, this study used thematic analysis to better comprehend children’s digital practices. This method effectively provides a voice for respondents who are frequently underrepresented in literature, enabling them to convey their experiences without being restricted by predetermined analysis categories (Pistrang & Barker, 2012).

The qualitative data collected from workshops and interviews were analysed inductively to generate themes using the six steps outlined by Braun and Clarke (2006). They included becoming familiar with the data, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, and producing an analysis. The researcher’s remote research experiences heightened the awareness of codes, such as children’s difficulties (e.g., physical discomfort), privacy issues caused by carergivers’ presence, and children’s creativity when data were analysed. Three key themes were extracted to organise the codes. An overview of the key themes extracted is presented in Figure 1. Each theme is further explored in the subsequent discussion.

Figure 1. Themes derived from children’s interviews and workshops.

Findings

Children’s experiences in family communications via WeChat

Because media literacy is a key criterion during long-distance communication (Madianou & Miller, 2012), it is necessary to first understand children’s digital skills to address the question, “How do children use social media to navigate their family relationships during prolonged separation?” Media literacy is defined as “the ability to access, understand, and create communications in a variety of contexts” (Ofcom, 2022, p. 2). Therefore, children’s competence in using WeChat is examined in terms of three aspects: media access, issues of understating, and creating communications.

Issues of access

Although communication technologies have become one of the key means via of which families can maintain relationships with one another, the children participating in this research project were not well equipped to use digital devices. Among the child participants in both the workshops and interviews (n = 41), 26 had no personal communication devices and, thus, had to borrow their carers’ smartphones for parent-child communication. For those interviewees without their own phones, most described how they dreamed of having their own smartphone to have more freedom to talk to their parents when they felt like it. This resonated with what children said during the school workshops. More than half of the workshop participants (16 of 31) who had no access to their own media devices described their unsatisfactory experiences with using their carers’ devices to communicate. One common scenario occurred when carers had to change their schedules, and children and parents had to rearrange video/audio calls on short notice.

Having access to media devices, such as smartphones, is not the same as children having their own WeChat accounts. Among the 15 workshop participants who claimed to have their own smartphones/smartwatches, nine children stated that they had their own WeChat accounts through which they could keep in touch with their migrant parents independently. According to WeChat’s terms of service, children under 13 years are not allowed to register their own WeChat accounts. Because of the real-name registration regulation when using the internet in China, children younger than 13 cannot register an account by themselves, because their age will be verified by WeChat. Those workshop participants who claimed to have access to their own WeChat accounts said they used additional SIM cards purchased by their parents/carers, which could override the WeChat policy and which they could not obtain themselves. The remainder of the participants (4 of 15) who said they had their own devices did not have their own WeChat accounts and had to use the accounts of their carers.

Only four of ten interviewees had their own WeChat accounts. Their parents had helped them to register these accounts to facilitate parent-child online communication. However, two of these four interviewees said that they preferred to use their carers’ accounts because switching accounts from their carers’ phones to their own phones was too time consuming.

The research from which this article derives indicates that carers’ involvement in family communication can encroach on communication rights for some child participants (Han, 2023). There is evidence to support the argument that adult family members have overlooked their children’s privacy in family communication. For example, carers’ gatekeeping of media devices prevents some children from having frequent contact with their parents. Depending on children’s digital practices, using carers’ devices and accounts to engage in parent-child communication may affect the breadth and depth of conversations and constitute an invasion of children’s privacy. Children who were equipped to use digital devices and personal accounts enjoyed greater privacy and openness in parent-child communication. For example, two children, both aged 12, who had their own smartphones and WeChat accounts, engaged in a wider range of activities on WeChat. These two children said they would leave comments if they saw their mothers post something new and often received responses from their parents. One of the participants posted a picture of her birthday cake on her own WeChat account and received a comment from her migrant mother saying, “Happy birthday, my dearest.”

Issues of understanding

To explore the child participants’ understanding of social media, both workshop and interview participants were encouraged to discuss their knowledge of WeChat. Because the workshops took place on school premises and, according to school regulations, pupils were not allowed to use any digital devices on campus, the workshop participants had to describe verbally their competency and understanding of WeChat. There were 25 children in the senior age band (ages 11 to 13) and six in the junior age band (ages 6 to 10). Children in both age bands felt confident about their proficiency in using the various functions of WeChat without help from their carers. Three of the younger children, who were younger than 10, found it difficult to use the text-message function in WeChat, because they did not know how to type words in Pinyin.³

The findings derived from the workshops were confirmed by observations during the online interviews. The online interviews enabled the children to demonstrate their technical proficiency and ability to use various WeChat functions. They were conducted via WeChat – the same platform used for parent-child online communication – and children were given their carers’ devices to attend the interviews. In general, the child participants were fluent in using the various functions of WeChat except in the case of two children who younger than 10 and struggled with typing because they were not proficient in Pinyin. The digital activities and subsequent interviews showed that the parents and carers did not have to teach the child participants how to use WeChat. Eight of the ten child interviewees were self-taught WeChat users and had learned by observing how their parents/carers used WeChat in their everyday lives.

Creating communication

Before examining the media creation of the child participants during online communication, it is clear that a lack of media access in participant families can impact the children’s involvement in media production. A combination of regulations concerning phone usage for boarders on campus and parental concerns about the potentially harmful effects of digital media at home means that children, primarily boarders, may not have had sufficient access to devices. This has inhibited their development of the skills required to use WeChat effectively.

Based on the data analysis, age differences seemed to impact the form of media production adopted by children. According to the responses derived from both the workshops and interviews, younger children (ages 6 to 10) commonly engaged with the basic functions of WeChat, such as video/audio calls. They also preferred audio to text messaging if they had difficulty typing because the former helped them to better express their ideas to their distant parents. In addition to using basic WeChat functions, the older children (ages 11 to 13) were able to engage in a wider range of activities on WeChat. For example, two children – one aged 11 in a workshop and one aged 13 in an interview – mentioned that they knew how to use the red packet⁴ function of WeChat to receive pocket money from their parents. In this sense, some of the multiple functions of WeChat enabled children of different ages to participate in media production on their own terms when interacting with their parent(s). Because of its visual affordances, video calling was the preferred WeChat function among all 41 child participants in the interviews and workshops. Audio-calling seemed to be less popular.

In general, the data show that children have enough practical knowledge about WeChat to enable online parent-child communication. However, differences in children’s ages and levels of media literacy must be taken into consideration when evaluating their participation in online communication. It is also clear that the children could participate in a wider range of parent-child interactions online through their own smartphone and WeChat accounts. Having outlined the media-related literacy practices of child participants, the next section focusses on what long-distance communication looks like from the children’s perspectives and how they navigate communication and continue being part of a family from a distance.

Children’s difficulties in family communication via WeChat

Although WeChat is a video-based platform that enables visual contact between parents and children, according to the children who participated in both interviews and workshops, a gap still exists between children’s communication needs and the technological affordances of WeChat. Four interviewees claimed that they struggled to articulate their feelings during online parent-child conversations.

The reason children fail to maintain phone conversations is because they lack conversational skills, such as turn-taking, asking questions, and listening skills (Ballagas et al., 2009). This observation echoed what two younger participants experienced during video calls on WeChat. One of the interviewees, aged nine, said he had relatively short conversations, which lasted about 10 to 15 minutes, with his parents because he ran out of topics to discuss. He added that his co-present grandmother would often step in to help when he was unable to answer his parents’ questions. However, he believed that his communication skills had improved as he learned more vocabulary in school, which had helped him maintain longer online conversations of up to 30 minutes. Another child interviewee (age 9) said, “I don’t know what to say to my dad during a video call. What I can do is smile.”

An additional problem prevented the older children from speaking with ease; not every child in the sample was comfortable appearing on the WeChat webcam. One interviewee (age 13) told me that he felt nervous and stammered when he was filmed. As he put it, “I don’t have a stammer offline. I have no idea why it happened to me during video calls.” Another child interviewee (also age 13), said that he was unwilling to discuss his feelings with his parents because he felt uncomfortable talking in front of the webcam, as if he were under surveillance.

The child participants also felt they were not given sufficient time during online communication to fully express themselves and share their thoughts with their parents. Half of the workshop participants reported that time constraints put communications under pressure during online WeChat calls. With limited time, the children found it difficult to report comprehensively to their parents what they had achieved that week. As reflected in the pen-and-paper exercises incorporated into the creative workshops, most children wanted to share their achievements at school with their parents to receive parental praise. However, they often failed to do so because of the limited time available and because they had too much to tell. Therefore, it was common in online conversations that children forgot what they wanted to say and felt regret about this.

In addition to time constraints, the presence of carers was also identified as a challenge for children as they attempted to express their feelings freely. Seven out of the ten interviewees did not have their own bedrooms and had to share living and sleeping spaces with their carers. Themes of children’s privacy recurred throughout the data collected from the interviews and workshops, because the child participants were unwilling to share their thoughts in their WeChat calls with parents in the presence of their carers. For example, a 12-year-old girl in a workshop who did not have her own bedroom felt embarrassed to tell her mother about her first period in the presence of her grandfather. Children’s privacy needs seemed to have been overlooked by carers and parents. In fact, the lack of space for private communication demotivated some interviewees and prevented them from sharing their feelings with their parents. However, these difficulties rarely caught the attention of adult family members.

An additional drawback of online communication reported by interviewees was the physical discomfort caused by long-distance communication. Four out of the ten interviewees experienced arm or backaches when parent-child conversations were too long. This finding was consistent with the observation during an online interview. A nine-year-old child asked his grandmother to help him hold the phone when his arms became tired 15 minutes after the interview had begun. His grandmother stepped into the interview and helped her grandson hold the phone for a while to give his arms a break. In addition to arm aches, two child interviewees stated that when they were younger, their eyes became tired after a long video call (about one hour). An 11-year-old boy recounted, “I could not stare at the screen too long when I was seven- or eight-years old.” Another interviewee who had the same problem chose to use the audio call function when he was talking to his parent to avoid eyestrain, despite preferring the use of video calls to see his mother’s face. Although online communication involved some physical discomfort for some children, none of the interviewees was provided with any equipment, such as a phone holder, to make online communication less physically demanding.

Based on the online communication experiences of the child participants, mediated communications via social media, such as WeChat, are not always child friendly. This is because they cannot cater to children’s communication skills, which may have implications for family communications in separated families. Although WeChat provides children with opportunities to have visual contact with their parents from afar, the nature of the communications is still language based. This imposes constraints on children, because they may lack the skills needed to maintain conversations. In addition, the research results suggest that children may be subject to stress in mediated communication, because it is challenging for child participants to express their ideas in the limited time available for WeChat calls. Although constraints, including a lack of conversational skills, time limits, and physical discomfort, were identified in the children’s experiences of mediated communication, they also attempted to overcome these constraints. The next section addresses the strategies adopted by the child participants to achieve a better experience within parent-child communication.

Children’s creative strategies for enabling family communication via WeChat

The data analysis suggests that children show creativity in addressing the limitations of mediated communication. According to responses gathered from both the workshops and interviews, the child participants were often expected to check in with their parents on a weekly basis. This was especially the case for those children who were boarders and returned to their carers’ homes on Friday for the weekend. Memory lapses emerged as a recurring theme among some child participants, which prevented them from sharing their daily lives with their parents in the way they had hoped. Five child participants – two in the interviews and three in the workshops – developed strategies to address this issue of lapses in memory. For example, an 11-year-old interviewee created a topic list before she had WeChat video calls with her parents. Three workshop participants shared similar experiences: they had chosen what to discuss with their parent(s) on the weekend before the actual calls took place. A 10-year-old interviewee mentioned that he wrote down certain points to discuss with his mother before each video call. If the conversation were interrupted due to a poor internet connection, the notes also enabled him to pick up where he left off after his mother reconnected and managed to call him again.

Some children also developed creative strategies to address the visual constraints of the webcam. Because of the restricted perspective offered by the webcam, which does not fully capture bodily movements, several children opted to position themselves at a greater distance from the camera. This enabled their parents to obtain a more comprehensive view of their growth. A 13-year-old interviewee also asked his grandmother to hold the camera for him to ensure that his mother could see his entire body. Another 13-year-old interviewee, whose carer was his aunt, came up with an idea to ensure that his mother understood his full height:

I used my aunt’s height as a reference to tell my mom how tall I am. For example, I told my mom that I had reached my aunt’s ear level. She knows the height of my aunt, so she gets to know mine too.

To avoid the awkwardness of long-distance conversations, two boys who participated in the school workshops played a popular, mobile, multiplayer, online battle arena (MOBA) game called “King of Glory” with their fathers via WeChat accounts. This game has different modes from which to choose and allows fathers and sons to face off against one another. These two children reported that they liked turning on their microphones and talking with their fathers while the game was on. They believed that this kind of conversation was more engaging and seemed more natural to them.

Faced with technical problems, including unstable or poor internet connectivity, that affected the quality of parent-child communication, even younger children (aged 10 and under) in workshops and interviews knew how to fix the problems themselves. For example, three young workshop participants knew how to turn off the Wi-Fi connection on their phones and switch to mobile data if the internet were too slow. If this approach did not work, many children waited to get back online later because they preferred WeChat video calls, which required a stronger internet connection. During internet disruptions, most children turned to other activities to make the waiting process more bearable. These included watching animation on television, doing homework, or talking to their siblings/carers. To avoid physical discomfort, two interviewees used mugs or books as temporary phone holders to free their arms if conversations lasted longer than usual.

Based on the interview and workshop data, it is clear that physical distance and the use of WeChat have given children more ways to avoid and/or resist parental intervention. During parent-child conversations, children tended to self-censor regarding topic choices to stop their parents from questioning them or intervening in their lives. Half of the interviewees tended to avoid the WeChat webcam when they sensed the “danger” of being scolded. For example, a 13-year-old interviewee used the noisy environment of his mother’s workplace as “cover” to mention those things his mother might be upset about, such as a drop in school grades: If she missed what I said, it is her problem, not mine, because I told her already.

It was also common to see that children were considerate of their parents’ feelings and chose to keep certain information to themselves to prevent parental anxiety or concern. Children refrained from telling their parents about various things for different reasons. Three interviewees avoided mentioning minor injuries, because they did not want their parents to worry about them. Two children – one in a workshop and one in an interview – decided not to tell their parents about certain unhappy experiences they had during online communication.

Discussion

The extant literature has not sufficiently studied children’s experiences, feelings, and interpretations, despite their active engagement with social media to negotiate family relationships during parental migration. This article provides empirical and methodological contributions to our understanding of children’s digital practices during family separation.

Through studying children’s voices, it has been identified empirically that children’s media literacy plays a crucial role in determining the quality of family communication via WeChat. Although Chinese separated families rely on social media platforms, such as WeChat, for family communications, children in this study did not always have sufficient access to communication devices and WeChat accounts. This necessitated carers’ involvement in parent-child communication. It can be argued that limited media access may restrict the range of online activities involved in family communication, and carers’ intervention may further complicate family dynamics.

Both the interviews and workshops revealed that children demonstrated creativity in addressing the limitations of mediated communication, such as physical discomfort, technical issues, and memory lapses, despite the challenges involved in parent-child communication. The digital practices of child participants show that children actively engage with WeChat to maintain family relationships, rather than being merely recipients of remote parenting and passive users of social media.

Despite the creative approaches employed, the difficulties faced by child participants in this study during mediated communication via WeChat have largely been overlooked. This suggests that the internet-based communication platform is not particularly child-friendly. The empirical findings of this article emphasize the importance of considering children’s communication needs, a responsibility shared by parents, carers, and platform designers to facilitate children’s digital engagement. Considering the children’s media literacy and living conditions in rural areas of the participant families, it is better for parents and carers to provide sufficient technical support and create a private communication environment to foster open communication. Meanwhile, adult family members should be aware of time constraints and potential physical discomfort resulting from online communication. Ideally, platform design should address children’s challenges by incorporating affordances that encourage healthy usage patterns, such as catering to children’s physical abilities and accommodating varying levels of media literacy.

Methodologically, this study calls for consideration of children’s communicative and social capabilities in research design. Online research as a response to the COVID-19 lockdowns is not without limitations in studying children’s digital practices. Given the shift to remote research, it became a challenge as a researcher to conduct research online with children when they behaved in unexpected ways. For example, an eight-year-old interviewee found it difficult to sit still and continued changing his position to be comfortable, which affected the sound quality of the recording. However, there were some unintended benefits of studying children remotely. First, the online setting simulated the same environment as that in which parent-child communication occurs, which offered rich insights into the issues that children face when communicating via WeChat. Second, conducting online interviews permitted observing how children use WeChat. Examples include their technical proficiency in using certain functions, their attention span, and difficulties in online communication. Finally, researching children remotely enabled the observation of how children exercised their agency. Initially, it was anticipated that the presence of carers and teachers would influence the children’s responses, but this was proven to be untrue. The children found innovative ways to express themselves privately. For example, a 10-year-old interviewee lowered his voice to complain about his strict father, whereas another interviewee waited for his grandmother to leave before sharing his feelings of being misunderstood by his parents during online communication. To further explore children’s digital practices in mediated communication, it will be useful to combine online research with face-to-face research activities, such as interviews and participant observations. The combination of online and offline approaches allows researchers to compensate for the limitations of each format.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank her Ph.D. supervisor Professor Jeanette Steemers for her invaluable comments on drafts of this article. A heartfelt thank you also extends to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by King’s-China Scholarship Council Ph.D. Scholarship programme.

Notes on contributors

Xiaoying Han

Xiaoying Han received her Ph.D. in Culture, Media, and Creative Industries from King’s College London. Her research focuses on media industries, children’s media, social media, and new media. Her work appears in publications, such as the Journal of Children and Media, and edited book volumes, such as Histories of Children’s Television Around the World, Children and Media Research and Practice during the Crises of 2020, and From Networks to Netflix.

Notes

1. In this research, the term “carers” refers to the primary caregivers for left-behind children when their parents are not present at home.

2. A high-risk ethics clearance was obtained from King’s College London (Ref:MOD-19/20–14,314/).

3. Pinyin is the Romanisation system for Mandarin Chinese and is based on pronunciation.

4. The concept of the red packet is based on the Chinese tradition of hongbao. It refers to important occasions when money is given to family members and friends as a gift. The red packet function offers users the option to give monetary gifts to other users of the app by giving virtual credits, because WeChat allows users to add their bank card details and transfer money online.