Developing scales to measure parental mediation of young children's internet use

Abstract

With children using digital media at ever younger ages, media-education becomes a pressing issue for parents. As there is hardly any research on how parents guide the online activities of toddlers and young children an internet-survey was held among 792 Dutch parents of children aged between 2 and 12 years. Factor analysis revealed that for the internet, parents partly use the same strategies they also apply for television and video games: ‘co-use’, ‘active mediation’, and ‘restrictive mediation’. In addition, they also utilise new strategies: ‘supervision’ and ‘technical safety guidance’. Mediation was mainly predicted by the child's age and online behaviour (e.g., gaming, social networking), as well as by the number of computers in the home and the parents' gender, education and computer/internet skills. Finally, parents also use more mediation when they expect that the internet has a positive effect and particularly when they believe that it has a negative impact.

Keywords:

• young children
• internet
• parental mediation
• social networking
• casual gaming

Notes on contributors

Peter Nikken is Professor at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and senior researcher at the Netherlands Youth Institute, Utrecht. His research interests include parental guidance of children's media usage, effects of media on learning and risks, and media rating systems.

Jeroen Jansz is Professor at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research interests include the changing relations between media consumers and media producers in contemporary participatory culture, and interactive entertainment media such as video- and computer games.