“Which apps are good for my children?”: How the parents of young children select apps

Abstract

Abstract In our digital society, digital media are fully integrated in most homes, and children start using them very early. Their favorites are mobile devices: they usually start by experimenting with the parents’ smartphones, and several children under 8 years old have their own tablets. Parents are facing the challenge of mediating digital media very early on for the first time and have mixed perceptions and attitudes towards the opportunities and risks of digital technologies. Sonia Livingstone has been working on the notion of “positive online content” for the last decade, supported by other stakeholders such as the POSCON network, aiming to identify and disseminate guidelines and criteria for producing and selecting positive digital content for young children. Our research applies and adapts these guidelines and criteria to mobile media, highlighting the protection of children’s rights (such as privacy), their engagement and participation, and the development of diversified competences. In our empirical work, we set out to identify the criteria used by parents of young children for selecting apps for them, exploring the features that they value the most. As a context, we also explored the parents’ account of their children’s digital practices and of their parental mediation. We conducted an online survey in Portugal to parents of children under 8 years old and obtained a total of 1968 valid answers. Our findings reveal that parents tend to perceive mobile media having their offline experiences as reference: they identify educational with school and traditional formats such as puzzles and building games, overlooking the pedagogical potential of the favorite formats of children, such as simulators. Also, parents do not value technical features such as user experience and interface, or the active participation of children. They are, nonetheless, aware about the possibilities of privacy invasion and commercial exploitation.