In today’s digital age, young people will spend their lives immersed within the intricate realm of digital technologies. Data are clear: children and teenagers are investing more time in media, starting earlier, and engaging with digital platforms in increasingly social and interactive ways (Boniel-Nissim et al., 2022). In fact, a striking 58% of Italian infants consumes media in the form of computers, tablets and smartphones in their first 15 months alive (DeMarchi et al., 2023). This prevalence increases alongside age; indeed, the ubiquity of social media among adolescents is undeniable, with less than 8% of Italian 15-year-olds reporting never using any social media (Galeotti et al., 2024)
These trends underlie the need to study and understand the effects that digital technologies can have on today’s youth. Specifically, early adolescence emerges as a critical period, given the increased attention to peer approval and independence from parents/caregivers, in which extensive social media use may strain family functioning as parents struggle with relinquishing control over their child's virtual interactions (Vannucci & Ohannessian, 2019). To this regard, a complete ban on all digital technologies does not seem plausible nor beneficial. Even though digital technologies might have some negative effects on young adolescents (Orben et al., 2022), their scope is too multi-faceted to be entirely negative. For example, social technologies can facilitate the defining of peer communities that can invite positive influences and the possibility of bonding over similar interests (Charmaraman et al., 2022).
Thus, it appears that young people can benefit from digital technology if they interact with it properly.
In fact, even as adolescents experience cognitive growth and greater independence, they continue to thrive when guided by rules and parental support. Tutoring figures (e.g. family members, teachers, instructors) have a critical role in these stages: they have the possibility to recognize potential dysfunction associated in children’s media use. In fact, intervening in the early stages of development proves pivotal, seeing that it can help establishing healthy media usage patterns before more damaging habits take hold (Coyneet al., 2022). That is, once adolescents are more inclined to interact with digital technologies compulsively, parents may find it more difficult to act effectively upon these online behaviors, increasing the risk of doing so in a negative manner (Koning et al., 2018). To facilitate beneficial results however, parents must understand these phenomena and avoid potential parent-child conflict over autonomy and control regarding mobile devices.
To this regard, in recent years multiple companies have introduced tools that can help parents regulate their children digital technology use. These instrument scan be app-specific, such as Meta family Center (Meta, 2024), or be more generalized such as Nethive’s Hiveflow (Nethive, 2024). In general, though, parental control software can help in this direction, by acting as an intermediary between parents and their children. This technological mediation is in fact, likely to attenuate the negative feelings associated with imposing restrictions on young people, particularly when their usage is directly monitored by their parents (Bertrandias et al., 2023).
Parental control software is just one of the many parental mediation strategies which parents can adopt to influence how their children use digital technologies. Parental mediation is a broad term that refers to all parents’ actions that restrict the time adolescents spend using digital technologies or explain specific media content, in order to minimize negative and maximize positive effects (Beyens et al., 2022). Given this ample scope, it’s easy to understand how parental mediation may serve as a multifaceted tool. It not only anticipates and prevents potential issues but also addresses existing challenges within adolescent online behavior. This is especially relevant since scientific research suggests that even though parents are aware of the need of controlling their children’s technological usage, the extent to which parents regulate it may depend on their general attitudes and capabilities with digital instruments, as well as their children’s own use (Poulain et al., 2023).
To this end, it’s imperative that parents learn to apply different media regulations strategies in a coherent and consistent way. In fact, in the process of learning or imitating behaviors, children who experience consistent parenting in a digital home environment show higher levels of Internet literacy and lower risks of problematic smartphone use. (Liu& Wu, 2023). Furthermore, parents who are generally inconsistent in their parenting practices report having a more difficult time in reliably enforcing internet-related limitations for their children’s benefit (Miltuze et al., 2021). One can infer that, like other aspects of child behavior, inconsistent parental structuring can increase the likelihood of children exhibiting maladaptive and unacceptable conducts. This inconsistency may, in turn, prompt parents to resort to more coercive measures in a vicious circle that would only push children to try to circumvent and undermine parental efforts at mediating digital technology use.
It appears indeed that consistent parental mediation could serve as a plausible solution for parents concerned with their children digital technology use. Various research has been conducted over recent years that supports this hypothesis. Diverse form of parental mediation, including monitoring, restrictive and active mediation, as well as implementing strict rules regarding internet and smartphone usage, are associated with lower reports of problematic digital technology use among adolescents (Beyens et al., 2022). Furthermore, parental restrictions on smartphone use seem to mitigate negative out comes associated with early exposure to digital technology, like anxiety and depressive symptoms (Charmaraman et al., 2022). Interestingly, mediation’s potential positive effects do not only apply to children and adolescents. A series of studies show that utilizing parental control software is linked to an overall enhancement in anticipated parental well-being. In this sense, entrusting some specific restriction to an application might enhance parents' feelings of control and effectiveness while alleviating psychological burden and stress (Bertrandias et al., 2023).
Digital technologies’ ubiquity in youths’ lives poses an increasingly difficult challenge for parents. With no plausible way to stop, and proofs that media use may have some advantages for young people, parents able to promote adaptive uses of these instruments will strongly help their children psycho social adjustment. Considering this scientific evidence, it is of fundamental importance that parents adopt technological mediation practices to better understand and follow their children in a critical period of their development. During the next articles we will present multiple strategies that parents can embrace to reach these objectives.
