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 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.