Children's Digital Media Practices within the European Family Home: Does Perceived Discrimination Matter?

Abstract

This article builds on unreported data from the EU KIDS ONLINE project (25,142 9–16 year-olds, fieldwork mid-2010), presenting findings about children viewed by their parents as being discriminated against (n = 774), compared to a group whose parents held no such opinion (n = 22,690). We look at majority youth, excluding ethnic minorities. Since reasons for discrimination were not asked for, we suspect they may be diverse. Our central question is whether the feeling of being discriminated against has a bearing on children's experiences with respect to online risks and on their parents’ response in the form of online mediation strategies. We hypothesize that perceived discrimination will lead to more exposure to online risks, but not necessarily to more harm. We expect that parents of children who are perceived as discriminated against will be more worried about their children and, will restrict their digital media use. Generally speaking, these hypotheses were confirmed.