engleski

Maternal practices and maternal mediation of children’s digital technology use in relation to children’s negative on-line experiences

In attempt to mediate the negative impact of digital technology use on their children, parents apply an array of mediation strategies. Researchers differentiate between several types of mediation strategies, and the most often studied include: active, restrictive, and technical mediation, and monitoring (Livingstone et al., 2011). Based on family system perspective (Goodman, 1983), another aspect that is important to consider in parental media regulation are parental practices in general. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship of parental practices and parental mediation of children's digital technology use to children's negative on-line experiences. Participants are 1409 Croatian mothers and female guardians of children aged 8 to 13 years who completed a survey providing us with self- assessments of their parental practices (maternal support, maternal control and maternal compliance), and parental mediation strategies (active, restrictive and monitoring), as well as assessments of the rate of occurrence of their child's negative on-line experiences. Parental practices were assessed using the Parental Behavior Questionnaire (Keresteš et al., 2012), and parental mediation was assessed using 13 items adapted from previous studies (Nikken & Jansz, 2013 ; Nikken & Schols, 2015 ; Kotrla Topić et al., 2021). Children’s negative on-line experiences were assessed using a 5-item scale designed for the purpose of this study. The research presented here is a part of a larger project titled Child well-being in family context (CHILD-WELL), financed by Croatian Science Foundation. Only restrictive mediation is significantly related to children’s negative on-line experiences (r=-.05, p<.05). Mothers who apply more restrictive mediation report less negative on-line experiences for their children. As for parental practices, mothers who report more maternal support, and less maternal control and maternal compliance also report less negative on-line experiences for children (r=-.15, p<.01, r=.16, p<.01 and r=.08, p<.01, respectively). Based on mother's assessments of children's negative on-line experiences, two groups were created – one with children who experienced less negative on-line experiences, and one with those who experienced more negative on-line experiences. A series of one-way ANOVA analyses showed that children who experience less negative on-line experiences receive more active mediation from their mothers and more maternal support, and at the same time less maternal control and maternal compliance from their mothers, than children who experience more negative on-line experiences. Result point to different relations of specific parental practices and parental mediation strategies of children’s digital technology use with children’s negative on-line experiences.

parental practices, parental mediation, negative on-line experiences, early adolescence

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