A qualitative study on parental mediation of rural‐to‐urban migrant children's smartphone use in China: Concerns, strategies and challenges

Abstract

This study explores parental mediation of smartphone use by rural‐to‐urban migrant children in China. A total of 16 migrant parents participated in semi‐structured interviews. Reflexive thematic analysis is conducted to analyse the transcribed interviews. Findings indicate that migrant parents are highly concerned about the harmful impact of smartphone use on their children. Three parental mediation strategies mentioned in previous studies are confirmed, that is, restriction mediation, monitoring and active mediation, whereas a new mediation strategy, namely, activity substitution, is identified in this study. This study finds that the parents use a combination of different strategies for parental mediation. Furthermore, four themes identify the challenges in parental mediation: Lack of time, skills and helper for parenting and father's absence, inconsistency between parents' restrictive mediation and own overuse practices, the adverse effect of COVID‐19 and the need for professional help. Finally, implications for social work practice are discussed.