Parents have long been encouraged to treat their child’s development as a capability, with the imperative being to maximize this capability. At the same time, however, children’s ‘natural’ process of development must be allowed to take its course. Digital media technologies promise to not only enhance children’s developmental capacity, but also threaten to disrupt their normal development. Drawing on qualitative research involving 40 Australian parents, this article examines parents’ concerns about their teenage children’s use of digital media. It examines how parents negotiate the tension between technological development and the benefits it affords their child, and the perceived risks that technological development poses to their child’s normal development, through mediating what they construct as positive and negative exposure to digital media. Parents distinguished between media use that was considered to enhance their child’s development and use that had the potential to disrupt it, by categorizing various activities as appropriate and inappropriate.

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The problem of cyberbullying has been the subject of considerable media attention in Australia and has been framed as a crisis threatening the wellbeing of Australian youth, provoking a comprehensive policy and legislative response to the problem. Definitions of cyberbullying, however, remain contested and there is a lack of nuance in public debates about cyberbullying. This article draws on interviews and focus groups with forty Australian parents to determine parents’ anxieties, perspectives, and experiences in relation to cyberbullying, a perspective that has remained relatively under explored. This study found that while online conflict, exclusion and relational aggression appear common amongst young people, parents in this study eschewed the term cyberbullying, instead characterising negative online peer interactions as part of ‘normal’ child development. This paper demonstrates that a more nuanced understanding of negative online behaviours is needed. The findings have particular relevance to policy makers and organisations tasked with addressing cyberbullying.

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