Investigating the Digital Parenting Behaviors of Parents on Children’s Digital Game Play

Abstract

This article aims to understand the attitudes, mediating and monitoring behaviors of parents related to the digital games played by their children. For this qualitative research, 30 parents answered 14 open-ended questions. Data analyzed descriptively. The data were analyzed with respect to the research questions and the analysis showed that the findings could be grouped into three themes: attitudes, monitoring, and mediating. The findings of the study demonstrated that parents thought that educational games developed their children mentally, developed their critical thinking skills, enabled them to follow up on how to benefit of those games, and developed their imagination. The research findings revealed that parents limited the time that their children spent with digital games; tried to be careful with regard to their children's choices of digital games; and had positive attitudes toward educational games, but not others. The results implicated that parents need to raise their digital parenting approach. It should be noted that digital parenting does not mean parents to play more digital games. Instead of that it provides them to teach their children the risks and gains that may face in digital games.

The More Digital You Are, The More Your Child is Addicted to Digital Games: A Correlational Study

“…As a matter of fact, the study, which aims to understand parents' attitudes, mediation and monitoring behaviors towards the digital games their children play, suggested that parents' digital parenting approaches have effects on the risks that students may experience in digital games. (Fidan, Güneş & Karakus, 2021) Overall, the digital game addiction level of the students was low, and the males had a higher game addiction level than the females. Students' digital game addiction increased as they spent more time in digital environments, and the average of gaming addiction for students who spent 5-6 hours in digital environments was higher than the other time averages.…”

Parents' awareness of the conscious use of applications on smart devices: A scale development study

“…It is inevitable for children to use smart devices, and it is not the right approach to prevent or prohibit this use (Lim, 2018). Instead of preventing their children from using smart devices, parents should have knowledge and awareness of the conscious use of these devices (Fidan et al, 2021;Gür & Türel, 2022;Huang et al, 2018;Manap & Durmuş, 2020). For this reason, this scale, which we developed to measure parents' knowledge and awareness of the conscious use of applications on smart devices, lls the gap in the literature.…”

“…They concluded that children preferred entertainment, parents appreciated learning and safety, and stakeholders emphasized the importance of a positive user experience. Fidan et al (2021) examined the digital parenting attitudes and behaviors of parents towards their children's digital game playing habits and determined that parents expressed positive and negative opinions about the bene ts of digital games played by their children and put a time limit on digital game playing. Lanina survey studies aimed at examining parents' knowledge of applications, ownership of mobile devices, application purchasing habits, children's use of applications, and application usage contexts by parents and their children.…”

Examining the relationship between parents’ digital parenting self-efficacy and digital parenting attitudes

“…According to Yurdakul et al ( 2013 ), digital parents act according to the needs of the digital age, can use digital tools as much as necessary, are aware of digital opportunities and risks and protect their children against the risks in such environments, behave respectfully in virtual environments as in real life, and convey this to their children and open to technological developments. Digital parenting goes beyond traditional parenting in online environments and requires certain responsibilities (Fidan & Seferoğlu, 2020 ). A digital parent is defined as someone who has basic technology literacy, is aware of online risks and threats and knows how to protect their child against these risks, incorporates digital technologies into parenting practices, regulates his child’s interaction with digital media, and follows the developments in technology (Huang, Li, Chen & Straubhaar, 2018 ; Kabakçı-Yurdakul et al, 2013 ; Mascheroni, Ponte & Jorge, 2018 ).…”