Parents’ digital competence in guiding and supervising young children's use of the Internet

Abstract

Children use the Internet at an increasingly younger age and many parents do not have the necessary knowledge to protect or guide them. A previous study showed that 78% of children between the ages of 6 and 9 used the Internet and that their parents were usually with them, but 40% of these children would surf at some point without supervision. This research aims to examine the relationship between the parents' digital competence and the different elements included in the parental mediation process. The sample is made up of 1827 parents who answered the survey. A relationship is observed between the parents' level of education and their digital competence. The results show that for parents with greater digital competence it is more likely that their 6-to 9-year-olds are already surfing the Internet. They also supervise more frequently and have more knowledge of the online activities that their children carry out.

Problematic Smartphone Use in Adolescents: Are Parents’ Digital Competence, Parents’ Negative Attitudes, and Perceived Parental Efficacy Important?

“…With immediate access to global information, children and adolescents are expanding their worldviews and learning styles, as well as extending social networks across distance and culture. Another result found that some parents consider the educational value of applications to be important during the selection of content and applications appropriate to their children (Pons-Salvador et al, 2022). Thus, it allows parents to further encourage their children to use smartphones for useful purposes.…”

“…Parents' digital competence was measured using Digital Competence Instrument (Pons-Salvador et al, 2022). It includes eight items related to activities that parents might be able to do, with items (1) blocking messages from someone you do not want to contact, (2) finding information on how to use the Internet safely, (3) putting a page on a bookmark, (4) changing privacy profile settings on a social media, (5) comparing different websites to contrast information, (6) deleting the history of pages visited, (7) blocking unwanted advertisements or "spam," and (8) change filter preferences in an online shop.…”

Parental digital competence and influences on parenting mediation

“…The digital competence of the parents also translated into the early acquisition of digital skills by the children (Saçkes et al, 2011). Parents proficient in digital tools were more likely to urge their children to use Microsoft PowerPoint and the Internet to produce learning materials (Tran et al, 2020), even among children as young as six years (Pons-Salvador et al, 2022).…”

“…Under supervision, parents kept time limits for the usage of digital devices. Pons-Salvador et al (2022) observed that parents of children aged 6-9 years would allow children to go online with maximum supervision and are themselves digitally competent and are aware of activities children do online. However, the participants of this study exhibited a supervision mediation preference even https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.e3307987 when they were not digitally competent enough in most cases, and exercised the mediation of children even beyond the age of 9 years.…”

“Just Be Careful, Since Social Media Is Really Not as Safe as It’s Being Portrayed”: Adolescent Views on Adult Support for Safer Social Media Use

“…Researchers, teachers, next of kin, and government agencies are concerned about the potentially harmful influences of social media; these concerns relate to the ongoing increases in the time that adolescents spend in front of screens (Elhai et al 2021), the negative and even dangerous communications they may encounter online (Hjetland et al 2021), as well as the perceived vulnerability of young people (Valkenburg et al 2022). According to Pons-Salvador et al (2022), most parents are aware of the benefits and risks of the Internet, but many of them did not know what to do to protect their children. More than half of the parents said they did not know how to set up content filters or manage parental control, and 40% did not know how to block unwanted advertisements.…”