Family Socioeconomic Status And Parents’ Education As Indicators Of The Primary Use Of Digital Media By Children

This paper is a response to studies conducted in other countries on how the socioeconomic status of families affects the media use patterns and media education strategies imposed by parents on their children. Admittedly, research on the subject in Slovakia is largely lacking. Our study is based on an assumption of a close relation between the level of education, household income and parents’ preference for the purpose to which children are allowed to use digital media. Our research was conducted on a sample of 572 parents with children aged between 3 and 8 living in the Žilina self-governing region. Based on the analysis, a mild correlation was observed between household income and the preference to allow children to use digital media to avoid boredom and fill in the time without parental attention. The correlation between the level of education and preference for digital content was not confirmed. The research has led to a conclusion that most parents tend to prefer exploiting the entertainment potential of digital technologies while minimizing screen time. The conclusions of this research are compatible with similar studies pointing to the prevalence of restrictive (quantitative) mediation present in Slovak Families.

There is a weak yet significant correlation between household income and the parents’ interest in using digital media, suggesting the lower the income, the lower the digital activity. This is true regardless of the purpose of use – when parents try to prevent boredom of their children or when they want to fill in children’s time while engaging in other activities. Thus "the research suggests that higher-income households are more likely to use digital media in those situations as a substitute activity for their children." (Polievková, P., 2020) As for parental mediation, findings show parents´preference for restrictive mediation reflected primarily in limiting the child’s time spent with digital media rather than excluding specific content. "Parents tend to perceive higher risks in the excessive use of digital media in terms of time rather than content." (Polievková, P., 2020)