Not at the Dinner Table

Abstract

Parents and children both use technology actively and increasingly, but prior work shows that concerns about attention, family time, and family relationships abound. We conducted a survey with 249 parent-child pairs distributed across 40 U.S. states to understand the types of technology rules (also known as restrictive mediation) they have established in their family and how effective those rules are perceived to be. Our data robustly show that children (age 10-17) are more likely to follow rules that constrain technology activities (e.g., no Snapchat) than rules that constrain technology use in certain contexts (e.g., no phone at the dinner table). Children find context constraints harder to live up to, parents find them harder to enforce, and parents' most common challenge when trying to enforce such rules is that children "can't put it down." This is consistent with the idea that banning certain technologies is currently easier than setting more nuanced boundaries. Parents and children agree that parents should also unplug when spending time with family, while children alone express frustration with the common parent practice of posting about children online. Together, our results suggest several mechanisms by which designers and families can improve parent-child relationships around technology use.

Children and Adolescents and Digital Media

“…Today, more children own and use mobile devices independently, 13 making monitoring and regulation much more difficult. 16,68 More research is needed on how parents can best supervise and guide their children's media use.…”

Parent distraction with phones, reasons for use, and impacts on parenting and child outcomes: A review of the emerging research

“…Additionally, in interviews with 1,000 children and teens about their parents' phone use, Steiner‐Adair and Barker () found that children often used negative emotion words, such as lonely, sad, and angry, and they felt dissatisfied with their time with their parents when devices were in use. Researchers have also found that children expect parents to model good device behavior and habits surrounding mealtimes (Hiniker et al, ). Overall, these results suggest that children and teens experience negative emotions surrounding their parents' use.…”

“…Future work should examine the prevalence of parent device absorption and distraction, reasons for use, feelings about use, and child outcomes in more diverse samples. Furthermore, there is often a lack of child or teen perspectives on the issue (although there are a few notable exceptions; e.g., Hiniker et al, ; Jiang, ; Stockdale et al, ). It is also clear that the processes can differ depending on the child's age, especially as older children and teens also have their own devices (e.g., Stockdale et al, ).…”

Mothering on Facebook: Exploring the Privacy/Openness Paradox

“…Community concerns around children and online privacy tend to focus on privacy concerns regarding children putting themselves at risk by sharing too much information about themselves, rather than children's privacy rights (which may be undermined by parents making pictures of their younger children available in public forums). One exception is Hiniker, Schoenebeck, and Kientz's (2016) study of family perspectives on household technology rules, which found children reported significant frustration with parents' over-sharing of content about them. Children said they found the content shared by their parents embarrassing and contributed to their online presence without their consent.…”