A Qualitative Inquiry into the Contextualized Parental Mediation Practices of Young Children’s Digital Media Use at Home

Providing children with digital opportunities while equally minimizing risks is a challenging responsibility. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of in-depth knowledge on how parents mediate young children’s digital media use. This article describes a qualitative, mixed-method study involving 24 parents and 36 children aged 3 to 9. The contribution is twofold. Firstly, we examine the strategies parents apply and the contextual factors shaping their mediation practices. Secondly, we reveal the emergence of new strategies and point to their dynamic nature. The emergence of distant mediation and participatory learning suggests new prospects for parental mediation literature in today’s digital world.status: publishe