For the last decade, many questionnaires have been used to measure the strategies that parents use with regards to their children’s Internet use, defined as parental mediation. However, research has shown that these questionnaires do not lead to valid results. The reason can be due to either the inconsistencies in the content or format of the questions and/or the definitions that are used to describe these strategies. With the goal of explaining the reasons that lead in these inconsistencies and suggesting a consistent framework, in this review we focus on (a) explaining the issues that emerge from 10 questionnaires and (b) defining three different types of parental strategies. In order to formulate consistent definitions, we asked a panel of experts in the field of social media and parent-child communication to assess the content of the questions. As a result of this assessment, three different types of parental mediation strategies emerged: (a) restrictive parental mediation, which refers to parental controls, (b) enabling parental mediation, which describes the communication between the parent and the child regarding the safe use of the Internet, and (c) observant parental mediation, which focuses on the observations of either the child’s behaviour or the screen when the child is online.
An Initiative of
DCU Anti-Bullying Centre
