Expanding the Unidirectional View on Parental Television Mediation: Children’s Guidance of Their Parent’s Television Use

Abstract

Compared to parental mediation research, much less is known about how children influence and guide their parents’ media use. This study examined whether children also mediate the television use of their parents. Measures of an existing television mediation scale were reversed to the perspective of the child guiding the parent’s television use. A sample of 187 parent-child dyads completed a cross-sectional survey in Flanders (Belgium). Factor analyses showed that the original subscales were reproduced with high internal validity. Both parents and children had congruent views about children’s television mediation; television mediation and children's restrictive mediation was positively associated with conflict in the family.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all parents and children who were willing to fill out our survey. We also thank prof. Leon Kuczynski of the University of Guelph for his insightful comments and feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript. Finally, the comments by two anonymous reviewers greatly helped to improve this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Foundation - Flanders [grant number G062414N].

Notes on contributors

Sara Nelissen

Sara Nelissen (M.Sc., KU Leuven) is a doctoral candidate at the Leuven School for Mass Communication Research, Belgium. Her research interests include media use in the family context, parent-child influences and interactions concerning media use and health.

Jan Van den Bulck

Jan Van den Bulck (Ph.D., D.Sc.) 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.