Out of Sight, Out of Mind: The Parental Mediation Strategies of Parents of Children Under Two in the Digital Era

Abstract: This thesis investigates what parental mediation strategies parents of children under twouse and what factors are involved that influence their decisions. To find that out, it isalso of interest to this work how these parents integrate media in daily routines withtheir children and for what purposes they turn to digital devices. To find out about theirmediation strategies, six families kept a media diary and ten first-time parents wereinterviewed as follow-up to the diaries. The results of both methods showed that parentsof children under two mainly used restrictive mediation, active mediation and distantmediation. Restrictions regarded time, content, devices, and location. However, theserestrictions were no clear formulated rules yet but affiliate to the high awareness that theparticipants stated regarding media use with their children, probably also influenced bymoral panics. The same applies to distant mediation: even though media was used inmoments when parents needed to do e.g. housework, most parents refrained fromreferring to media as a ‘babysitter’. The most intriguing finding is that first-time parentsrestrict their own media use so that their child’s screen time is as little as possible.Acting as role models, parents would hide their devices when their child becomes awareor look at it somewhere where their child cannot see it. Factors that influencedmediation strategy decisions were high awareness also due to official recommendations,concerns of parents, positive notions towards media use, tendency to show more aschild grows, and negative emotions connected to media. With these findings, this thesiscontributes to contemporary research on mediation strategies of parents under twowhich is still scarce now but needs to be considered in further research as this studyproves.