Engl. transl.: Parental Mediation of Technology. A Systematic Literature Review

This paper provides a systematic review of the international literature concerning the issue of parental mediation related to children’s technology usage. The review covers papers published between 2007 and 2017. Our paper pays special attention to the diversity of the conceptual frameworks utilised in the empirical literature to describe the various forms of parental mediation strategies. Therefore, it also intends to create a typology clarifying the complex relationships of these various concepts. As a result, based on earlier empirical findings, four main parental mediation strategies are identified: 1. restriction, 2. active parental mediation and co-use, 3. monitoring, and 4. deference. Furthermore, the paper outlines the most important thematic areas related to parental mediation. Three specific issues seem to emerge from the literature: 1. risky online behaviour, 2. privacy (especially in connection with sharing private information), and 3. problematic technology usage. So far, most of the research projects of parental mediation remained at a general level, and in relation to these, the empirical results are quite ambiguous and inconclusive. Besides, the inconsistent use of terms makes comparison of the data difficult. The role of other factors linked to parental mediation is also not unequivocal in the literature. One exception to this ‘rule’ is related to the age of children, namely, it is a general pattern that parents mediate older children less frequently. Furthermore, gender and the level of digital literacy also seem to be significant factors determining modes of parental mediation. Lastly, it can be argued that the sociological perspective is lacking from most of the papers. This would have allowed focusing on the role of socioeconomic status of technology use more closely, thereby exploring the phenomenon of parental mediation in a more nuanced way

The paper's goal is to map the scientific theorization of the concept of parental mediation by reviewing the relevant literature published between 2007 and 2017. Regarding research on parental strategies the authors conclude that those are rather focusing on the description of these actions but usually do not investigate the effectiveness of those. They also summarize the results on the connections between the applied strategies and some demographic aspects, like age and gender. By their analysis the authors conclude the following regarding the theoretical discourse: 1. researchers usually do not differentiate between children's exposure to risks and actual risky behavior a child may perform. 2. Most of the literature lacks sociological approach and mainly relies on concepts of psychology and/or communication science. They emphasize that the utilization of sociological concepts may enrich discourse and would help to understand the expectations of parenting in this area. 3. Usually researches do not include topics which are in the center of interest of the parents in this area. "Az itt bemutatott tudományos diskurzussal kapcsolatban három további értékelő megállapítást tudunk megfogalmazni. Egyrészt érdemes kiemelni, hogy az általunk feldolgozott tanulmányok általánosan kezelték a kockázat fogalmát, és nem tettek különbséget a gyermekek kockázatnak való kitettsége és a kockázatos viselkedése között. Bár mindkét fogalom kapcsolatos a kockázattal, véleményünk szerint mégsem érdemes egyenlőségjelet tenni a kettő közé. Az első esetben ugyanis egy potenciális veszélyforrásra gondolunk, míg a második esetben konkrét, kockázattal járó technológiahasználati mintákra. Másrészt kijelenthetjük, hogy az általunk feltárt szövegkorpusz legnagyobb részéből hiányzik a szociológiai látásmód. Ez persze azzal is kapcsolatos, hogy a tanulmányok jelentős része pszichológiai vagy kommunikációelméleti kötődésű." (Kutrovátz Kitti – Balogh Tekla – Wittinger Bálint – Király Gábor: A technológiával kapcsolatos szülői mediáció. Szisztematikus empirikus áttekintés a 2007 és 2017-es évek között megjelent tanulmányok alapján, Socio.hu, 8. ÉVF. 4. SZÁM (2018) "Regarding the scientific discourse detailed in this article we can derive three evaluative conclusion. Firstly, it worth noting that the examined works applied a general approach when in the conceptualization of risk and did not differentiate between the risk children are exposed to and the risky behavior. Although both concepts are connected to risk but we think that they should not be regarded as same. In the first case there is a potential danger while in the second there is a concrete usage pattern what is risky. Secondly, we can conclude that the majority of the corpus of literature we investigated misses the sociological approach. Of course this partly caused by the fact that most publication is connected to psychology or communicational studies". (Kutrovátz Kitti – Balogh Tekla – Wittinger Bálint – Király Gábor: A technológiával kapcsolatos szülői mediáció. Szisztematikus empirikus áttekintés a 2007 és 2017-es évek között megjelent tanulmányok alapján, Socio.hu, Vol. 8, Issue 4 (2018)