Through the tablet glass: Mobile media, cloud computing and transcendent parenting
Abstract
In many urban societies, mobile media and cloud computing that offer always-on, always-available information and communication services are increasingly pervasive. These services shape the communication practices and media consumption habits of families, influencing how parents guide children's media use, and how parents and children connect with one another. In this paper, I explain how the growing prevalence of mobile media and cloud computing has different implications at each stage of young people’s development. I then argue that the advent of pervasive, ubiquitous media has engendered the practice of “transcendent parenting” which goes beyond traditional, physical concepts of parenting, to incorporate virtual and online parenting and how these all intersect. In this emergent form of parenting, parents must transcend every media consumption environment that the child may enter, their children’s offline and online social interaction milieu and ‘timeless time’ as experienced in the apparent ceaselessness of parenting duties.
... Hızla kendini geliştiren ve değişim gösteren, devamlı yenilenen bir mecra olan dijital dünyada bu sorumlulukları yerine getirme, dijital ebeveynlere görev olarak yüklenmektedir (Lim 2016). Çocukların güvenli birer ortamda yetişmeleri ve sağlık durumlarındaki kontrollerinin sağlanması, çocukların gelecekte üretken ve yaratıcı bireyler olarak yetişmesi ve kültürel değerlerin çocuklara aktarılması ebeveynlerin temel amaçlarından sayılır. ...
Bu çalışma dijital ebeveyn öz yeterliklerinin çocukların problemli medya kullanımları ile ilişkisini incelemek amacıyla yapılmıştır. Nicel araştırma biçimi kullanılarak yapılan bu çalışmada Bursa ili İnegöl İlçesinde ilkokula devam eden 7-10 yaş arası çocuğu bulunan ebeveynlerin dijital ebeveynlik öz yeterlikleri ile çocuklarda problemli medya kullanımı arasındaki ilişki incelenmiştir. Elde edilen demografik bilgilerden ebeveynlerin eğitim durumu, yaşı, cinsiyeti, sahip olduğu çocuk sayısı, çocukların yaşı, cinsiyeti, internet kullanım yılı ile dijital ebeveyn öz yeterlikleri ve problemli medya kullanımı arasındaki ilişki incelenmiştir. Araştırmada 7-10 yaş arası çocuğu bulunan ebeveynlerin dijital ebeveynlik öz yeterlikleri Dijital Ebeveynlik Öz Yeterlik Ölçeği ile çocukların problemli medya kullanımları ise Problemli Medya Kullanım Ölçeği ile ölçülmüştür. Normallik testi yapılmış ve bunun sonucunda normal dağılım özelliği gösteren verilerde parametrik testlerden Pearson Momentler Çarpımı Korelasyon Analizi, ANOVA Testi, t Testi; normal dağılım özelliği göstermeyen verilerde parametrik testlerin non-parametrik alternatiflerinden Kruskal Wallis-H Testi uygulanmıştır. Araştırmanın sonucunda dijital ebeveynlik öz yeterliği ile çocukların problemli medya kullanımı arasında negatif yönlü orta düzeyde anlamlı bir ilişki olduğu görülmüştür.
... Nello specifico delle chat WhatsApp per genitori, queste sono state particolarmente studiate rispetto al loro utilizzo come strumento di comunicazione tra pari e tra genitori e insegnanti all'interno dei servizi educativi e formativi di differente ordine e grado. Lim (2016), ad esempio, sostiene che le chat scolastiche dei genitori consentano di mettere in atto una genitorialità di tipo "trascendente", che consente di essere coinvolti nella vita scolastica dei figli al di là dei confini spazio-temporali dei servizi. Uno studio italiano ha trovato che queste chat sono, come nel caso dei forum e dei gruppi Facebook, più frequentemente utilizzate dalle madri che dai padri, maggiormente da genitori più giovani e con più di un figlio e che la partecipazione tende a decrescere con l'età dei figli (Cino, Gigli, & Demozzi, 2021). ...
Il capitolo analizza come i media digitali e le piattaforme online influenzino la genitorialità, evidenziando il ruolo di forum, gruppi Facebook e chat come spazi di partecipazione, apprendimento e supporto per i genitori. Questi contesti favoriscono il confronto tra pari e la condivisione di esperienze, permettendo ai genitori, soprattutto alle madri, di accedere a informazioni, scambi emotivi e sostegno, riducendo il senso di solitudine tipico della moderna genitorialità. Tuttavia, l'accesso e l'utilizzo di tali spazi sono condizionati da fattori strutturali e sociali, come il genere e le competenze digitali, con una partecipazione prevalentemente femminile. Il contributo mette in discussione il dualismo tra comunicazione online e offline, enfatizzando il potenziale complementare dei media digitali. In conclusione, vengono avanzate delle riflessioni su come integrare tali piattaforme con interventi offline, suggerendo direzioni future per la ricerca, soprattutto riguardo alle esperienze di genitori meno rappresentati nei contesti digitali.
... Consequently, digital parenting had become a multifaceted concept that referred both to the ways in which parents regulated their children's relationship with digital media (parental mediation) and to the ways in which parents themselves incorporated digital media into their everyday activities and parenting practices, thereby developing new forms of parenting. These forms included parents sharing information and receiving information and advice from each other, making effective use of the Internet for their children's learning activities (e.g., school and course activities), downloading educational applications or games they needed, and accessing learning resources to meet their children's needs (Fidan & Seferoğlu, 2020;Lim, 2016;Livingstone & Byrne, 2018;Lupton et al., 2016;Mascheroni et al., 2018). The umbrella review showed that the diverse forms of digital parenting corresponded to two types of general parenting categories: home-based and schooling-related digital parenting. ...
... they receive (Kabakçı-Yurdakul et al. 2013;Uslu and Yildiz Durak 2022;Vezne et al. 2023). This situation has resulted in the designation of individuals referred to as 'parents' in the literature as 'digital parents' in digital environments (Lim 2016). A digital parent is aware of the risks and threats in digital environments (Durak and Kaygin 2020;Durak et al. 2024), and individuals who are aware of the potential risks are able to protect their children from such situations and take appropriate action (Kabakçı-Yurdakul et al. 2013;Pekyürek et al. 2023). ...
It is of paramount importance that children are equipped with the requisite digital parenting skills to protect them from the risks and threats that they may encounter in the digital environment while also enabling them to seize the opportunities that the digital realm presents. Mobile recommendation systems (MRS) represent a significant intervention for the development of digital parenting competencies among adults. Nevertheless, there is no evidence in the literature of any attempt to develop the system. The objective of this study is to examine the process of developing an MRS for parents' digital parenting skills and to evaluate the effectiveness of the developed system through a pilot study. The study employed the developmental research Type 1 model. The study was structured in three stages: the design of the MRS, the development of the recommendation system (RS) and the pilot study. In order to facilitate the development of the MRS, three distinct working groups were established. The research yielded several key findings. Primarily, it established the theoretical foundation of the MRS, delineated the design principles to be considered in system design and elucidated their application in the system. Additionally, it identified the essential components and functions that should be incorporated into the system. In light of the expert opinions on compliance with andragogical principles, it was observed that the consideration of environmental factors emerged as a prominent theme. It was observed that the experts assigned the highest suitability scores to fault tolerance, low physical effort and an instructional environment in the system design. The system was found to be effective in terms of redundancy, sound and picture quality for all content titles and multimedia principles. The findings of this study indicate that the MRS may be an effective tool for fostering digital parenting skills. However, further research is necessary to develop age‐appropriate measures and to assess the long‐term impact of the system.
... Thus, children need support, and guidance is essential in ICT technology use. However, it is seen that different support methods are suggested in the literature [5], [6]. On the other hand, it is also clear that parents are responsible for keeping their children away from the risks they face or raising their awareness about what they should do in online environments [7]. ...
In the era of digitalisation, working parents today rely more than ever on electronic gadgets as digital babysitters and device-led playtime to entertain their children. The study suggests that parents and their interactions with the home environment may contribute to shaping children’s screen time. However, many struggle to keep up with the immense variety of mobile applications easily downloaded online. Thus, long screen time exposure inhibits children’s ability to engage actively in physical activities as well as affects children’s well-being development. This scoping review aims to identify parental perceptions of children’s exposure to screens for a long period of time and how screen time affects children’s well-being. Five databases, including Scopus, Web of Science (WOS), Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE), Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), and ScienceDirect, were used in this research. In the initial identification stage, 218 articles were identified from the mentioned databases above. However, there were only 81 articles found to be assessed for eligibility. A total of 34 articles are eligible for analysis and reference after the exclusion and inclusion process for data collection. The findings show that the increased exposure to screens raised concerns about potential negative effects on children’s emotions and behaviour.
... Following this blend of parenting and digital technology, a transcendent parenting movement has been on the rise (Mascheroni et al., 2018;Wahyuningrum et al., 2020). In this context, parents harmonize their children's online and offline experiences, interactions, and the timeless nature of digital exposure (Lim, 2016). Consequently, this complex and evolving role of parents now shapes children's educational, leisure, and social interactions, impacting their early growth crucially (Benedetto & Ingrassia, 2021). ...
Digital parenting refers to the parenting practices that maximize the benefits and minimize potential risks of children’s interactions with digital media and online spaces. Balancing the pros and cons of early digital usage is a challenge for many caregivers. This scoping review synthesizes evidence regarding digital parenting practices and their impact on children's digital use and development, drawing from 40 studies published in international peer-reviewed journals between 2010 and 2023. Four themes have emerged from this scoping review. Firstly, parental perspectives on early digital use diverged into positive views (as ‘educational aids’), negative views (as ‘distractions’), and cultural differences. Secondly, children's digital use was influenced by digital parenting practices, specifically parental modeling, parenting style, parental mediation and the intended purpose of children's digital use. Thirdly, a correlation was noted between varying results of digital parenting and children's digital use, with outcomes manifested in children's digital literacy, parent–child relationships, social-emotional and language development, behavioral issues, and emergent literacy. Fourthly, influential factors were child ages, parental and family-related factors (including gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, family structure, religion, and parents' digital literacy), and the type of digital resources. The review suggests that future research should concentrate on training programs to enhance parental digital literacy skills and employ monitoring tools to better assess children's digital use.
... Wouter Sluis-Thiescheffer Raising children in the digital age requires 'transcendent parenting' (Lim, 2016): parenting at the intersection of traditional and physical vs virtual and online concepts of parenting. Instead of focusing on single parameters such as screen time, parents should engage at a young age in children's online lives, play games with them and develop an identity on a social platform together, etc. Transcendent parenting pursues the idea that parents raise their children in a healthy balance between physical and online presence. ...
This study intends to enhance parents’ competencies in digital parenting by equipping them with the knowledge and strategies to effectively navigate and mediate their children’s engagement with digital technologies while fostering awareness of the potential opportunities and risks related to digital settings. For this purpose, e-content was developed, and applications for its use were created. The study established a content list including e-content scopes, titles, and subtitles. This process was conducted by determining the needs of parents who participated in the study. The content list was finalized and presented to nine experts. In line with the experts’ opinions, the final e-content list was adjusted. Based on the results, the e-content was developed using the outputs of the first stage. The content developed comprises 144 items, including e-books, infographics, podcasts, explanatory videos, and digital stories. After finalizing the contents, the third phase, evaluating the effectiveness of e-content using a quasi-experimental design, was conducted with the participation of 55 parents. The data were analyzed using appropriate analysis methods. Feedback from experts was analyzed using Lawshe’s technique. This review showed that the content list was appropriate in scope. As a result of the quasi-experimental study, the pre-test and post-test scores of the parents showed no significant difference.
Ebeveynler çocuklarına interneti ve teknolojiyi nasıl doğru kullanacakları ile ilgili bilgi verebilmeleri, yol gösterebilmeleri, onları sanal dünyadaki tehlikelerden koruyabilmek için belli yeterliklere sahip olmalıdır. Dijital ortamlarda çocukların çeşitli risklerden korunması ve o risklere karşı tedbirlerin alınması konusu ebeveynlerin sorumluluğunda olup dijital ebeveynlik kavramı ile açıklanmaktadır. Bu araştırmada teknoloji erişimi ve sosyoekonomik açılardan birbirinden farklı olan İstanbul ve Ağrı illerinde yaşayan velilerin dijital ebeveynlik yeterlikleri incelenmiştir. Araştırmada nicel araştırma yöntemlerinden ilişkisel araştırma modeli kullanılmıştır. Bu araştırmanın çalışma grubunu iki lisenin velileri oluşturmaktadır. Çalışma grubu 252 kadın ve 183 erkek olmak üzere 435 ebeveynden oluşmuştur. Veri toplama aracı olarak kişisel bilgi formu ve ebeveynlerin dijital ebeveynlik yeterlikleri ölçeği kullanılmıştır. Verilerin analizinde t-testi, ANOVA ve Spearman korelasyon katsayısı kullanılmıştır. Araştırma sonuçlarına göre velilerin sosyal medya kullanımları ve dijital ebeveynlik yeterlikleri illere göre farklılaşmaktadır. Araştırma sonucunda kadın ve erkek velilerin benzer dijital ebeveynlik yeterliliğine sahip olduğu görülmüştür. İnternet kullanım deneyimi ile dijital ebeveynlik arasında Ağrı ilindeki veliler için bir ilişki gözlemlenirken İstanbul ilindeki veliler için anlamlı bir ilişki görülmemiştir. Buna göre özellikle dezavantajlı bölgeler için teknoloji sahipliği, deneyim gibi faktörler dijital uçurumu her geçen gün daha fazla derinleştirdiği ileri sürülebilir. Ayrıca bu bölgelerdeki çocukların dijital ebeveynlikten daha fazla yoksun kaldıkları da söylenebilir. Özellikle ebeveynlerin teknoloji sahipliği ve kullanımının düşük olduğu bölgelerde; çocukların dijital okuryazarlık, iletişim ve güvenlik konularında okullar tarafından desteklenmesi önerilmektedir.
Changes taking place at the scientific, environmental, and societal levels have direct and indirect effects on the infant’s neurobiological and behavioral development, parenting practices, and family dynamics. Such changes include digitalization, artificial Intelligence, and robotics and their influence on parenting and child development. Advancements in technology that enable disconnecting procreation from sexual relationships and intimacy, and expansive definitions of family and parenthood challenge current theory, training and practice in infant mental health. Procreation without the need for a natural womb may open a new definition of women’s identity as it broadens it beyond the maternal role. Of course, these processes may vary across continents and cultures. At the macro level, the recent COVID pandemic, extreme climate changes, natural disasters, wars, and displacements have engendered a general feeling of fragility that impacts all human life. In the light of all these changes, one may wonder what is and what should be our roles as IMH clinicians in this complex social, environmental, and technological morass of change. This chapter emphasizes the need to have a code of ethics to regulate these complex processes and calls for the creation of a WAIMH Code of Ethics, based on the combination of the WAIMH Position Paper on the Rights of Infants; the Diversity-Informed Tenets for Work with Infants, Children, and Families; and the Code of Ethics now required for Endorsement in Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health by the Alliance for the Advancement for Infant Mental Health. Together, these recent statements serve to establish the importance of ethical practices related to justice and care within the context of infant mental health.
As powerful, portable media devices such as smartphones and tablets diffuse across the region at an unparalleled rate, families in Asia are coming to terms with the many asymmetries that these gadgets herald. Because mobile communication devices are deeply personal, but are also vested with a remarkable combination of instrumentality and emotionality, their entry into a household will inevitably provoke alternating reactions of anticipation and dread, efficacy and inadequacy, liberation and enslavement, and joy and drudgery. Within every home, these emotional dualities will pervade each family member’s experience of domesticating mobile devices, making asymmetries relating to power, expectations, practice, access, competencies, and values increasingly palpable. Families must therefore negotiate such asymmetries as they manage the growing presence of mobile communication devices and their expanding repertoire of locative and social media functions.
As globalization continues unabated, migration in general and student migration in particular have intensified worldwide. Mobile communication technologies are important links between migrant students and their left-behind family and friends. This chapter seeks to highlight the complex relationships between the students' migrant status and their technology use, as well as between technology and the family in Vietnamese transnational households. This chapter presents contextualised accounts of three Vietnamese migrant students' media use over a two-week period, drawing from data from a one-week media monitoring exercise, a one-week media deprivation exercise, semi-structured interviews and daily media diaries. The study found that the Vietnamese migrant students appropriated a variety of communication technologies to connect with their home country, which helped to energise family interactions, sustain family ties and facilitate parental and sibling mediation, thereby supporting bonding within Vietnamese transnational families. Moreover, the technologies also helped the students to build social capital with their left-behind friends in Vietnam.
This study was designed to investigate the revised and short version of the smartphone addiction scale and the proof of its validity in adolescents. In addition, it suggested cutting off the values by gender in order to determine smartphone addiction and elaborate the characteristics of smartphone usage in adolescents.
A set of questionnaires were provided to a total of 540 selected participants from April to May of 2013. The participants consisted of 343 boys and 197 girls, and their average age was 14.5 years old. The content validity was performed on a selection of shortened items, while an internal-consistency test was conducted for the verification of its reliability. The concurrent validity was confirmed using SAS, SAPS and KS-scale. Receiver operating characteristics analysis was conducted to suggest cut-off.
The 10 final questions were selected using content validity. The internal consistency and concurrent validity of SAS were verified with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.911. The SAS-SV was significantly correlated with the SAS, SAPS and KS-scale. The SAS-SV scores of gender (p<.001) and self-evaluation of smartphone addiction (p<.001) showed significant difference. The ROC analysis results showed an area under a curve (AUC) value of 0.963(0.888-1.000), a cut-off value of 31, sensitivity value of 0.867 and specificity value of 0.893 in boys while an AUC value of 0.947(0.887-1.000), a cut-off value of 33, sensitivity value of 0.875, and a specificity value of 0.886 in girls.
The SAS-SV showed good reliability and validity for the assessment of smartphone addiction. The smartphone addiction scale short version, which was developed and validated in this study, could be used efficiently for the evaluation of smartphone addiction in community and research areas.
The mobile phone has become an important and taken for granted part of children's and adolescents' lives. In many countries the vast majority of children and teens have a mobile phone and use it to coordinate, as a safety link and to weave their social networks and interact with their parents. In addition, the mobile phone has also been associated with less positive behaviors such as sexting, bullying and distracted driving. Author bios Rich Ling is a Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. He has focused on the analysis of the mobile communication and its consequences for society. Troels Fibaek Bertel is a PhD candidate at the IT-University of Copenhagen. His research is focused on the social uses of convergent mobile media among youth.
Video games have grown in number, variety, and consumer market penetration, encroaching more aggressively into the domestic realm. Within the home therefore, parents whose children play video games have to exercise mediation and supervision. As video games evolve, parental mediation strategies have also had to keep pace, albeit not always successfully. By transposing our appreciation of parental concerns over the historical development of video games, we propose an analytical framework identifying key affordances of video games, elucidating how their evolution has distinct implications for effective parental mediation. These affordances are portability, accessibility, interactivity, identity multiplicity, sociability, and perpetuity.
Despite the ubiquitous use of new communication technologies, gaps in our knowledge remain regarding who is likely to rely on particular technologies and potential ramifications of these forms of communication on individuals' relationships and adjustment. In an online survey, 211 college students reported on their use of electronic communication with a parent who they identified as their closest family member. Results indicated that students who report more frequent phone conversations with parents also report more satisfying, intimate, and supportive parental relationships, but those students who use a social-networking site to communicate with parents report higher levels of loneliness, anxious attachment, as well as conflict within the parental relationship. The findings offer new evidence on how electronic communication technology with parents is related to adjustment in college students. Our study also suggests that further research is needed using longitudinal designs to understand better young adults' use of technology to communicate in today's society.
While online, some people self-disclose or act out more frequently or intensely than they would in person. This article explores six factors that interact with each other in creating this online disinhibition effect: dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection, dissociative imagination, and minimization of authority. Personality variables also will influence the extent of this disinhibition. Rather than thinking of disinhibition as the revealing of an underlying "true self," we can conceptualize it as a shift to a constellation within self-structure, involving clusters of affect and cognition that differ from the in-person constellation.
Ninety-five percent of American kids have Internet access by age 11; the average number of texts a teenager sends each month is well over 3,000. More families report that technology makes life with children more challenging, not less, as parents today struggle with questions previous generations never faced: Is my thirteen-year-old responsible enough for a Facebook page? What will happen if I give my nine year-old a cell phone? In The Parent App, Clark provides what families have been sorely lacking: smart, sensitive, and effective strategies for coping with the dilemmas of digital and mobile media in modern life. Clark set about interviewing scores of mothers and fathers, identifying not only their various approaches, but how they differ according to family income. Parents in upper-income families encourage their children to use media to enhance their education and self-development and to avoid use that might distract them from goals of high achievement. Lower income families, in contrast, encourage the use of digital and mobile media in ways that are respectful, compliant toward parents, and family-focused. Each approach has its own benefits and drawbacks, and whatever the parenting style or economic bracket, parents experience anxiety about how to manage new technology. With the understanding of a parent of teens and the rigor of a social scientist, she tackles a host of issues, such as family communication, online predators, cyber bullying, sexting, gamer drop-outs, helicopter parenting, technological monitoring, the effectiveness of strict controls, and much more. The Parent App is more than an advice manual. As Clark admits, technology changes too rapidly for that. Rather, she puts parenting in context, exploring the meaning of media challenges and the consequences of our responses--for our lives as family members and as members of society.
Mobile devices are a ubiquitous part of American life, yet how families use this technology has not been studied. We aimed to describe naturalistic patterns of mobile device use by caregivers and children to generate hypotheses about its effects on caregiver-child interaction.
Using nonparticipant observational methods, we observed 55 caregivers eating with 1 or more young children in fast food restaurants in a single metropolitan area. Observers wrote detailed field notes, continuously describing all aspects of mobile device use and child and caregiver behavior during the meal. Field notes were then subjected to qualitative analysis using grounded theory methods to identify common themes of device use.
Forty caregivers used devices during their meal. The dominant theme salient to mobile device use and caregiver-child interaction was the degree of absorption in devices caregivers exhibited. Absorption was conceptualized as the extent to which primary engagement was with the device, rather than the child, and was determined by frequency, duration, and modality of device use; child response to caregiver use, which ranged from entertaining themselves to escalating bids for attention, and how caregivers managed this behavior; and separate versus shared use of devices. Highly absorbed caregivers often responded harshly to child misbehavior.
We documented a range of patterns of mobile device use, characterized by varying degrees of absorption. These themes may be used as a foundation for coding schemes in quantitative studies exploring device use and child outcomes.