"This book departs from the universalising and rescue narratives of poor children and technologies. It offers complex stories on how children's social identities (gender, caste, and religion), cultural norms, and personal aspirations influence their digital experiences. How do children challenge, circumvent, or reinforce the dominant sociocultural norms in their engagements with digital technologies? What can we learn about digital technologies and poor children's jugaad and aspirations in the urban sprawls of India? This book explores these questions ethnographically by focusing on how children in three urban slums in India access technologies, inhabit online spaces, and personalise their digital experiences, networks, and identity articulations based on their values and aspirations. It utilises insights from studies on jugaad, expression, and sociality to argue that poor children's material realities, community relations, and aspirations for leisure, class mobility, and belongingness profoundly shape their engagements with digital technologies." (Publisher description)

"In this chapter, I question the common assumptions and dominant discussions on poor children’s digital lives. Popular narratives on poor children in global South countries emphasise that the proliferation of digital technologies can tackle poverty, discrimination, and other social inequities. These narratives embed neoliberal logic and argue that children are either victims of digital technologies and need protection or are self-motivated to use these technologies for empowerment and development purposes. Poor children’s engagements with digital technologies exceed binary categories of analysis such as resistance–oppression and agency–subjection. Contrary to these dominant explanations, the chapter makes a case that poor children in India are globally oriented, locally grounded, exploitative and exploited, ambitious and leisure-driven, creative and innovative." (Abstract of chapter 1)