To Use or Not to Use: Mediation and Limitation of Digital Screen Technologies within Nuclear Families

Melanie Duckert, L. Barkhuus • 6/21/2021

Abstract

Today’s home environment is affected by multiple screen technologies designed for personal and home use, making family members audience of the omnipresent technologies. We investigate how the past decades’ increasingly technology saturated home environment influences home practices and parents’ mediation of their rules of conduct for children’s access and use. We conducted a two-part interview study with parents from different nuclear families, and found parental mediation of screen technologies to have become a complex and emotional process with continuous mediation of when to use or not use screens. Despite a shared goal of decreasing the role of screen technology, the parents differentiated between rules, regulations, and limitations, which could provide tensions within the family and between different families if attitudes and/or practices were not consistent. As such, we argue internal family rules and regulations to be a continuous negotiation between parents and children, where personal principles and external expectations impact a family’s code of conduct. Our study contributes to a better understanding of screen technology practices, leading to design guidelines for screenbased home technology.

Citations: 5