Livingstone, Sonia 
ORCID: 0000-0002-3248-9862
(2023)
Screen time dilemmas: a parenting perspective.
International Journal of Psychology, 58 (S1).
151- 151.
ISSN 0020-7594
Abstract
Parents read the daily headlines about ‘internet addiction’, along with advice about limiting screen time, in parenting magazines or the popular press. At the same time, they are called upon to avail their child of digital opportunities to learn. In qualitative research with 73 London families, complemented by a national survey of 2000 UK parents, we explored parents' response to the dilemmas they face regarding the influx of screen media in their homes and their children's lives. Screen time rules can be welcomed by exhausted parents as a way to resolve the deluge of contradictory parenting advice and obviate the need for a complex and continual balancing act between resisting and embracing technology. Yet the outcome can be problematic: screen time rules lead to parent–child conflict, and they distract parents from addressing the actual activities their children engage in online and their potentially beneficial or harmful consequences. Also problematic is that the screen time discourse constructs the parent's own identity as ‘police’, notwithstanding parents' efforts to mediate their children's digital activities constructively – as co-learners, resource providers, ‘brokers’, teachers and even peers or pupils. As the survey showed, parents are working to enable children's online opportunities and address risks, an effort erased from public recognition by the screen time discourse. To replace the focus on screen time, the paper will conclude by advocating a focus on what (the content), how, where, when (the context), why and with whom (the connections) children are watching, playing and doing things with screen media.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1464066x |
| Additional Information: | © 2023 The Authors |
| Divisions: | Media and Communications |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman H Social Sciences > HM Sociology |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Jul 2024 08:09 |
| Last Modified: | 14 Sep 2024 10:10 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/124141 |
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