Developmental digital technologies in human history, culture, and well-being

This special issue of Human Development offers theoretical and empirical studies of the ways that technologies – digital and otherwise – structure learning and development within cultural practices. The papers expand our conception of affordances of technologies for broader development goals than simplistic technocratic goals. Studies include a historical analysis of impacts of technology in structuring both individual and community development. There is longitudinal documentation of the evolution of the design of overlapping ecological systems in a midwestern city to expand opportunities for taking up digital tools for problem solving at the level of individual and community development. An empirical study of the design of a digital tool to support narrative sensemaking among child refugees acts as a resource for understanding children’s perceptions of their re-settlement experiences. A study of the uptake of video game playing in a social design-based experiment examines how such digital tools invite imaginative play that, in this design, support inter-generational problem solving and identity development among Latinx youth, families, and college-aged mentors.