Editorial : young children’s use of digital media and parental mediation

Abstract

Growing numbers of young children use a variety of media devices and applications at home (Jones & Park, 2015), and at an increasingly younger age. Parents report that their children are using digital technologies even at the age of one (Mifsud & Petrova, 2017). Mobile devices have become especially popular among children aged 0 to 8, with a large number of families with young children having smartphones and tablets in the home, although this has not automatically led to an increase in digital media use (Common Sense Inc., 2017), and does not tell anything about the range of factors influencing how the technologies are appropriated in the family setting (Plowman, Stevenson, Stephen, & McPake, 2012). In this special issue, we present a holistic perspective on young children’s digital media use by accounting for the various factors that shape their online experiences at home. We aim to arrive at a better understanding of how the digital media landscape offers both opportunities and challenges for young children. Previous research (e.g., Marsh, Hannon, Lewis, & Ritchie, 2017; Plowman et al., 2012) has shown that ‘digital literacy’ is established early on in young children (0-8) and they learn with technology at home. Plowman et al. (2012, p. 36) concluded that the ways in which “children, families and technology interact in the home [...help children towards an] understanding of the world, learning dispositions and the role of technology in everyday life”. This in turn has brought about increased concern that “young children’s lack of technical, critical and social skills may pose a risk” (Livingstone, Görzig, & Ólafsson, 2011, p. 3). Parents play an important role in shaping young children’s digital media experiences (Marsh et al., 2017). In order to gain a deeper understanding of the difficulties faced by parents to balance their role of mitigating and preventing the negative effects of children’s digital media use on the one hand, with that of providing them with the opportunities offered by digital media on the other, an extensive accumulation of knowledge on all aspects of parental mediation is required.