Family Media Ecology: Parental Mediation and Family Time

The spreading of ICT as an integral part of everyday life has had a tremendous effect on social connectivity. Practices relating to staying on- or off-line are popular in general media discussion and have been focus of research as well. Mediation is widely understood as a way of capturing the parental management of the relation between children and media, and it extends the parental role beyond simple restrictions to encompass also conversational and interpretive strategies as well as parental monitoring’. Given the complexity of media environment, such as mobile technology, this role is increasingly demanding.

The aim of this paper is to explore the practices of parental mediation with family wholeness approach particularly in the context of family time. Parental mediation is analyzed first by identifying family’s patterns of using mobile techonolgy and parental mediation practices; and secondly the contextual factors that associate with mediation practices. The study discusses particularly temporality and family time: How is time and temporality of family life linked with parental mediation? The study uses an interview data of 39 employed parents. The data was collected during 2016 in different parts of Finland.

Specific practices can be identified. These are active, restrictive, and collaborative strategies. Those adopting active parenting practice viewed mobile technology as a way of participating to the social and community life, but required active mediation, such as discussions and explanations. Restrictive parenting practice included restricting the use of mobile technology such as setting ‘proper’ time and place. Collaborative practice means that parents discuss and negotiate actively with their children on the practices and rules of using technology. Typically, but not restricted to, this style was adopted by parents of older children.