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Families 171of emails, which were typically written by the mother in the family. Familywebsites and online photo albums, including photos shared through publicsites such as Kodak Gallery and Shutterfly, emerged as important spacesfor families to share information and pictures of one another. Familieswithout regular or reliable Internet connections, such as in the studies offamilies in urban Los Angeles, viewed mobile phones and phone cards thatcatered to the Central American market as an important communicationmedium.In addition to various forms of personal media sharing, online conversationalmedia are increasingly used by transnational families to communicate.Transnational families with greater economic means also use newmedia such as Skype and webcams to enhance their sense of connectionand communication. 10 Raj, a freshman who participated in Megan Finnand colleagues’ “Freshquest” study, noted:It’s pretty neat to be able to see my brother, my family twelve thousand miles awayover the sea. . . . I just use Skype [Internet telephony software] for the voice capabilityand my webcam has some inbuilt software. . . . It’s nice to be able to see eachother and talk at the same time.Voice and vision are often viewed as the ideal modes of communicationbecause they mitigate the distances in time and space that typically plaguetransnational families.Although the particular expressions of sharing media and knowledgebetween parents and kids vary with parents’ own technical expertise, education,gender, time, and command of English, many parents expressedthe desire to create spaces and times for hanging out, messing around, and,as we see in box 6.2, geeking out with their kids. Much like after-schoolprograms that attempt to harness the passion for media in the name oflearning, families may also try to leverage media in their everyday interactions.While it is promising that parents and kids can come togetheraround interest-based practices (see chapters 5, 6, and 7), the gendereddimensions of spending time together with media—from a kids’ perspective,mothers are often described by kids as “clueless” or “hopeless” outsidethe domain of communication technologies and fathers as being the oneswho play or tinker with technology alongside their kids—suggest that newmedia continue to contribute to the production and reproduction of classand gender inequities in American society.