Parents need to consider how they will respond to the increasing integration of their children's lives with the Internet and digital devices.
Being a parent in the digital age
Quite often the introduction of new devices and pace of innovation in this field outrun even the most connected parents' efforts to keep abreast of how their children might be affected.
Parents can feel helpless in the face of media and regulatory debates about 'screen time', 'stranger danger', and complicated debates about privacy regulations and considerations.
Research about digital parenting explores parents' own experiences in this regard as well as related policy, legislative, and other socio-cultural factors.
Our research focuses on:
- Parental mediation, that is to say how parents engage with their children's media use.
- Forms of mediation can be broadly categorized as 'active' or 'restrictive'.
- Parental concerns, relating for example to screen time and its potential consequences
- Sharenting, that is to say where parents share information about their children in digital media
Resources
Sonia Livingstone presents research about Digital Parenting on Safer Internet Day, 2021, organised by the Digiskills project.