Media use is a daily, and some would say an hourly, activity for children and adults. According to Statista, the average daily time using digital media in the U.S. was 7 hours, 19 minutes in 2022. Children 8-10 years old spend 6 hours per day on screens and those 11-14 spend almost 9 hours per day (CDC.gov).
Parents, who use media in the presence of their children for work or personal reasons, worry about the effects of media on their children and how to regulate its use. Parenting experts offer suggestions for regulating media use by children. Are these methods effective?
A 2023 study tackled the three common ways that parents regulate their children’s media use and assessed how these methods relate to “problematic media use” in children and adolescents.
This meta-analysis included 41 studies of 47,264 children/adolescents and 77,494 parents/caregivers. The studies included in the analysis used different methods to operationalize “problematic media use” including screen time as well as validated scales. “Media use” included watching television, playing video games, and engaging with social media. Three types of parental mediation methods were assessed in these studies, and age of the child was an important variable.
The three types of parental mediation were (p. 6):
- Restrictive mediation: “rules to limit use of media by child”
- Active mediation: “discussing media-related concerns with child”
- Co-using mediation: “sharing and engaging in media-related experience together with child”
What strategies are effective at curbing problematic media use by children and adolescents? Overall, when all ages are included, active mediation techniques were related to reducing problematic media use, but co-using mediation had the opposite relationship to problematic media use.
When breaking down results based on child’s age, a different picture emerged of how parental mediation can be effective or ineffective. More restrictive and active mediation tactics were associated with reduced problematic media use for younger children, but not adolescents. However, co-using mediation seemed to backfire. Parents co-using media with their children was associated with more problematic use by both children and adolescents. The modeling effect seems to be at work here! As noted by the authors, “children might misinterpret parents’ effort to co-use as encouragement for more media use” (p. 18).
A challenging aspect of these findings relates to how problematic media use is measured: with a validated measure (for example, the social media addiction scale) or with a simple measure of screen time. The type of measure used lead to unexpected differences in outcomes. Both active and co-using mediation strategies were significantly related to screen time. However, using validated measures of problematic media use was not significantly related to mediation strategies. This may mean that parental mediation may be effective at reducing screen time, but not necessarily effective at addressing media addiction.
The use of correlational evidence must be interpreted with caution. Correlation does not mean causation! Although this study documented statistically significant correlations between these variables, it is impossible to determine if changes in one variable (for example, parental mediation strategies) caused changes in the outcome variable (for example, problematic media use). It is possible that problematic media use by children leads to parents implementing restrictions on future media use by children.
Considering the evidence presented in this study, what is the takeaway for parents? We have to carefully couch recommendations in applicable terms:
- Mediation strategies may work better with younger children, but may backfire with adolescents who are more savvy to hide their media use.
- Using active mediation strategies with adolescents and restrictive strategies with children may lead to reduced screen time but may not address underlying addiction to media.
Fam, J. Y., Männikkö, N., Juhari, R., & Kääriäinen, M. (2023). Is parental mediation negatively associated with problematic media use among children and adolescents? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science/Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement, 55(2), 89.
©Jennie Dilworth, Ph.D