When digital natives instruct digital immigrants: active guidance of parental media use by children and conflict in the family

ABSTRACT

Based on the premise that children are active agents who influence their parents’ media use, this study investigated child–parent digital media guidance. Children often introduce new media into the family and influence parents’ media adoption and use. This study also investigated whether this child–parent digital media guidance is associated with media conflicts in the family. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 187 parent–child dyads in Flanders, Belgium. Paired samples t-tests and multiple linear regression analyses were conducted. The results showed that both children and parents reported that children guide their parents how to use digital media, especially for newer media forms such as smartphones, tablets, and apps. Families where there was more child–parent digital media guidance reported more conflicts about media. These relationships were comparable in the parent and child reports.

KEYWORDS:

• Child agency
• media use
• child effects
• digital media guidance
• media conflict

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all the respondents who were willing to fill out the questionnaire. The Research Foundation – Flanders had no involvement in the selection of respondents, questionnaire design, item selection, analyses, conclusions, or writing of the text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Sara Nelissen, MSc, is a graduate student at the School for Mass Communication Research, at the University of Leuven, Belgium. She is studying the child effect and bidirectional influences in media and communication research,with a focus on parent–child dyads. She has also worked extensively on cancer information seeking behavior among people with and without a cancer diagnosis [email: [email protected]].

Jan Van den Bulck, PhD, DSc, is a professor of communication at the Department of Communication Studies, at the University of Michigan, USA. He is interested in the effects of the media on topics regarding violence and health, with a special interest in sleep phenomena. He has retained a special fondness for cultivation theory throughout his career [email: [email protected]].

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders [grant number G062414N].