Voice of children: Children in the restrictive mediation of smartphone use

Abstract

ABSTRACTParents set rules and regulations about children's media use, which is called restrictive mediation. This study aims to understand how children describe their behaviors in and attitudes to restrictive mediation of smartphone use in the family context. We conducted a narrative inquiry with 47 Chinese children, ages 7 to 12. Then we used semi‐structured coding method on the text transcribed from three types of collected data, including painting, written text and recording of the narrative. The study found two roles of children in the restrictive mediation process: children being monitored and children as the intervener. When the children are monitored by their parents, sometimes they disagree with their parental mediation when their parents' behaviors are also questionable. Parents should set an example for their kids and discipline themselves' media use first. On the other hand, children could also be the intervener of their parental media use. Although the intervention from children is less effective than the parental mediation, children do play some role in contributing to cultivating good family media use habits.