“…Moreover, as emerging technologies become more personified and interactive, young children may treat them as social partners. Parents are already reporting that their children have developed emotional ties with artificially intelligent entities in their homes (i.e., voice assistants;Hoffman et al, 2021) and young children see a virtual child as presenting more opportunities for social connection than a traditional doll(Aguiar, 2021). That said, the long-term implications of children's use of technology to obtain information or their development of social bonds with artificially intelligent devices or characters remain unknown.Ultimately, the papers in this special issue represent a starting point for exploring how children make sense of emerging technologies and how, as technologies change, children's beliefs and attitudes about technologies may change as well.…”