Parenting in Digital Era: a Systematic Literature Review

Abstract Parental care has a significant influence on children’s digital technology use (Ozgür, 2016 ; Valcke, Bonte, De Wever & Rots, 2010). The purpose of this literature review is to know the characteristics of the participants of the articles, the type of measurement, the type of digital parenting and the digital parenting determinant factors. The method used is a systematic literature review. The article search was done online by using the keywords “digital parenting” and/or “parental mediation of internet use”. A total of 20 articles in the period of 2011-2020 were used to carry out this literature review taken from Sagehub, Science Direct, Ebscohost and Proquest Dissertation. The results of the literature review show that most of the participants in these articles are parents who have children from childhood to adolescence and come from Caucasian races. The measuring instrument used in the quantitative approach is a questionnaire on parental mediation of internet use from previous studies or a questionnaire that has been modified according to the research setting. Meanwhile, the interview method and focus group discussion were used for the qualitative approach. The types of parental mediation of internet use that appear are active parental mediation, restrictive parental mediation, monitoring parental mediation, supportive parental mediation, and co-use/co-viewing parental mediation. While the role of parental mediation of internet use is mostly a dependent variable, in several articles it acts as a predictor variable. This shows the existence of internal factors and external factors that affect parental mediation in parents. The results of this literature review can be a foothold for other researchers who are interested in conducting research on digital parenting of parents in children’s digital technology use.Keywords: digital parenting, parental mediation of internet use, parents, adolescenc

Grand Challenges of Researching Adolescent Online Safety: A Family Systems Approach

Protecting adolescents from online safety risks is a major contemporary concern, and researching adolescent online safety is equally as challenging. Relatively few researchers have studied adolescent online safety, but the studies that do exist have documented threats from privacy breaches, cyberbullying, sexual predation, and other types of risk exposure. The grand challenge, however, is how we can approach these problems in a way that will protect adolescents while allowing them to engage socially online. We discuss two key challenges: operationalizing online safety; and defining online risks. We propose that Information Systems (IS) researchers should leverage family systems theory, a methodological approach grounded in developmental psychology, in order to address adolescent online safety issues

Parental Influences on Adolescents\u27 Risky Media Usage

The present study investigated how parenting styles influence adolescents’ risky media usage and how these associations vary according to media-specific parenting practices and adolescent characteristics. Participants included 315 adolescents aged 13-18 in the United States, who completed questionnaires on parenting styles (i.e., authoritative, authoritarian, permissive), media-specific parenting practices (i.e., active conversational practices, coercive monitoring, preventive practices), and their depression, self-esteem, and risky media usage. Findings indicated all three parenting styles were associated with adolescent exposure to risk through media, but only authoritarian and permissive were related to internet addiction. Across parenting styles, adolescents with parents who engaged in high compared to low levels of conversational practices were at greatest risk for internet addiction. Furthermore, greatest risk exposure through media was evident among adolescents with authoritarian and permissive parents who engaged in high levels of conversational practices and among adolescents with permissive parents who engaged in high levels of coercive monitoring. Adolescents with most depressive symptoms, who were at greater risk for internet addiction, had permissive and authoritarian parents. In contrast, across parenting styles, adolescents with high self-esteem were less likely to have risky media usage. The present study highlights the importance of examining parental influences in conjunction with adolescents\u27 characteristics in order to best understand the risk and protective factors for adolescent risky media usage

Medijska i digitalna pismenost: škola i suvremeno roditeljstvo

Today’s societies live in a world where the media construct reality, which also affects each individual media user. Children and their parents spend most of their time with digital media and contents. Therefore, researchers emphasize the importance of digital literacy of media users. They analyse new phenomena, challenges and risks associated with the anthropological, cognitive and social development of children and young people. An important role in media and digital education is played not only by teachers and schools, but also by parents and family. The aim of this paper is to present and analyse the theoretical approaches to digital media literacy, so-called digital parenting, and to interpret the results of the latest research in Croatia devoted to the digital habits of parents, their attitudes towards parental mediation strategies as well as to their satisfaction with the programmes of media literacy in the education system.Živimo u svijetu u kojem mediji konstruiraju stvarnost, ali i utječu na svakoga korisnika medija. Novim digitalnim medijima i njihovim sadržajima posebno su izložena djeca, pa znanstvenici u svojim istraživanjima veliku pozornost pridaju medijskoj i digitalnoj pismenosti. Pri tome vode računa o novim pojavama, izazovima i rizicima koji su povezani s antropološkim, kognitivnim i socijalnim razvojem djece i mladih. Posebnu pozornost posvećuju socijabilnosti djece i mladih, ali i korisnika medija općenito, rizicima razvijanja raznih oblika ovisnosti o internetu i digitalne demencije. Važnu ulogu u medijskom odgoju imaju ne samo učitelji i škole nego i roditelji i obitelj. Cilj je ovoga rada prikazati i analizirati teorijske pristupe medijskoj i digitalnoj pismenosti i takozvanom digitalnom roditeljstvu te izložiti i protumačiti rezultate najnovijih istraživanja u Hrvatskoj o digitalnim navikama djece, odnosno njihovih roditelja, te o ulozi i mjestu roditelja u procesu medijskoga opismenjavanja djece i mladih, kao i o njihovu zadovoljstvu programima medijske pismenosti u odgojno-obrazovnom sustavu

Maximizing opportunities and minimizing risks for children online: the role of digital skills in emerging strategies of parental mediation

As internet use becomes widespread at home, parents are trying to maximize their children’s online opportunities while also minimizing online risks. We surveyed parents of 6- to 14-year-olds in eight European countries (N=6,400). A factor analysis revealed two strategies. Enabling mediation is associated with increased online opportunities but also risks. This strategy incorporates safety efforts, responds to child agency and is employed when parent or child is relatively digitally skilled, so may not support harm. Restrictive mediation is associated with fewer online risks but at the cost of opportunities, reflecting policy advice that regards media use as primarily problematic. It is favoured when parent or child digital skills are lower, potentially keeping vulnerable children safe yet undermining their digital inclusion

Digital Parenting: Raising and Protecting Children in Media World

Digital media have quickly changed ways in which parents and children communicate, enjoy themselves, acquire information, and solve problems daily (both in ordinary and exceptional circumstances such as COVID-19 home confinement). Very young children are regular users of smartphones and tablet, so their early digital engagement poses new challenges to parent-child relationships and parental role. First, the chapter introduces the “digital parenting” construct, moving through the literature from “traditional” parenting styles to more recent studies on “parental mediation,” that is, the different behaviors parents adopt to regulate children’s engagement with the Internet and digital media. Second, the chapter reviews empirical researches on different parental mediation practices (active or restrictive behaviors) and how they are adjusted according to the child’s characteristics (age, digital competences, etc.) or parent’s media competence and beliefs. Finally, from a bidirectional perspective of parent-child relationships, the chapter discusses the role of youths’ social involvement, communication, self-disclosure, and digital skills on parent’s beliefs and practices. Implications for parent education and prevention of risks for early and excessive exposure to digital technologies are discussed

Family Digital Literacy Practices and Children’s Mobile Phone Use

Smart phones are ubiquitous in everyday life and are having a major impact on work, education, social relationships and modes of communication. Children are the fastest growing population of smart phone users, with use often focusing around internet access, e.g., 1 in 3 internet users in the UK are under 18 years of age. Despite their widespread use, relatively little is known about the factors that underpin children’s use. The home is a significant ecological context of development and recent research has highlighted the importance of the home environment in promoting and supporting the development of both safe and unsafe online behavior. Yet the importance of these influences currently remains relatively unrecognized. Therefore, in this paper we present a narrative review of evidence examining parental practices concerning digital communication technologies and applications, with a particular focus on smartphones, and how they relate to the use of technology by their children. Emerging evidence to date indicates that two important factors are at play. Firstly, parental technology use is closely related to that of their child. Secondly, that despite parents frequently voiced concerns about the nature and extent of their child’s mobile phone use, parents themselves often engage in a number of unsafe internet behaviors and excessive phone use in the home environment. Our review identifies two crucial lines of enquiry that have yet to be comprehensively pursued by researchers in the field: firstly, the adoption of a psychological perspective on children’s emergent behaviors with mobile devices and secondly, the influential role of context. Given parental concerns about the possible negative impact of technologies, parental awareness should be raised about the influence of their behavior in the context of internet safety along with the adoption of good digital literacy practices. It is anticipated that a comprehensive characterization of the associated contextual factors influencing smartphone use will serve as a catalyst for debate, discussion, and future research

Digital Parentship Practices of Instructional Technology Faculty Members: A Case Study

The purpose of the current study was to understand the digital parentship practices of faculty members with an Instructional Technology (IT) major within a qualitative approach. The participants of the study comprised of 13 faculty members from the IT field of any university in Turkey and who has one or more children aged 0-6 years old. The IT academician, in their role as mother or father, participated in the interview process. As digital literates, the participants of the study possess knowledge and expertise in the potential opportunities that technology offer, and also the possible risks that they pose to children. The findings showed that the majority of the participants do not hesitate to allow their children to use screen technology from an early age (from as young as 6 months old) in order to free up time for themselves or to attend to their work. This implies that the participants utilize technology in order to facilitate the role of parenting, even though they may appreciate it is seen as inappropriate. However, the academician parents who took part in this study applied more restrictive mediation so as to limit their children’s exposure to technology due to their very young age and owing to the children’s inability at that age to understand the potential risks. The findings of the study provided information so as to help understand the digital parentship practices of parents from the technology field, and to make suggestions about parenting strategies for younger children