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Exploring Parental Mediation of Internet Use Through Young Children's Perspective

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the parental mediation of children’s internet use from middle school students’ point of view. In doing so, we first developed a Parental Mediation Scale. Exploratory factor analysis suggested a four-factor structure (monitoring, safety, active, technical mediation), which was then verified through confirmatory factor analysis. After conducting validity and reliability studies of the scale, we applied it to 416 Turkish middle school students in the 2018-2019 school year. To examine the parental mediation of internet use in terms of demographic characteristics, we employed group comparison tests (i.e., independent samples t-Test and one-way ANOVA). The results indicated that middle school students perceived the mediation of their parents at a medium level. Moreover, parental mediation of internet use did not differ based on the age of children, child’s level of education, the gender of children, number of children in the family, parents’ level of education, and family’s income level.

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Acknowledgements

This study is based on the first author’s doctoral dissertation, which was supervised by the second author. The authors thank all children who were willing to fill out our survey. We also thank Drs. Yavuz Akbulut and Yıldız Kurtyılmaz for their insightful comments and feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript. Finally, we thank the Editor and anonymous reviewers for their feedback on the previous versions of the manuscript.

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  1. Department of Computer Technology & Information Systems, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Muş Alparslan University, Muş, Turkey

    Nihal Dulkadir Yaman

  2. Department of Computer Education & Instructional Technology, Faculty of Education, Anadolu University, Eskişehir, Turkey

    Işıl Kabakçı Yurdakul

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Correspondence to Nihal Dulkadir Yaman.

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Dulkadir Yaman, N., Kabakçı Yurdakul, I. Exploring Parental Mediation of Internet Use Through Young Children's Perspective. Educ Inf Technol 27, 7451–7469 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-10939-3

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