It’s 10 p.m. Online, Do You Know Where Your Parents Are?
By Josh Karp at 6:26 am on November 16, 2009 • Leave a comment
Heather Horst talks with parents about family dynamics in a digital world.
When University of California-Irvine associate project scientist Heather Horst and her colleagues at the Digital Youth Project set out to study how children, their parents and families interact with digital media, others thought they would probably come away with a set of “do’s and don’ts” for parents.
That, it turned out, was not the case. There was a lot of variety in how parents were dealing with the situation. Parents’ comfort or confusion depended on their own sense of expertise with new media.
Parents’ Involvement Depends on Their Digital Know-How
Parents with greater technological sophistication (a significant number of Silicon Valley families were interviewed for the study) didn’t view their children as digital natives, nor did they necessarily see themselves as outsiders.
“They knew their kids interests were different [from their own],” Horst says. “But, they weren’t afraid of the technology.”
For these families, the battles were the familiar battles. “[The arguments] weren’t about the media itself,” Horst says. “But, the kind of control debates that go on with adolescents in the U.S.”
But, in other less privileged families, and particularly those where English was not the primary language, the comfort with new media was markedly less, and the fear of online dangers much greater.
“There were issues tied to access and participation,” Horst says. “There was a lack of awareness of what was going on because they couldn’t read it, or they didn’t have access [to the internet] at home.”
Beneath the fear, however, parents in low-income communities did see the benefits of using computers or playing video games as a way to keep their children away from what they saw as unsafe conditions on the streets of their neighborhoods. In these families, supervision of their children’s digital media use was delegated to an older sibling or cousin, who understood the technology and could monitor what was going on.
Mom the Enforcer, Dad the Gamer
There were also differences by gender. As Horst reported in “Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out,” a book co-authored by cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito and other researchers on the Digital Youth Project, fathers tended to be more lenient, and they were also more likely to become heavily invested in their kids’ digital pursuits—buying them equipment or joining in while they created music. Moms were seen as either nagging enforcers or “hopeless,” according to teens interviewed.
“Most of the time my mom comes up with the rules,” 12-year-old Java told Horst, while her dad was “into” music and technology.
Horst finds that it’s a good idea for parents to be aware of and understand their child’s interests. When that happens, Horst says, the parent can provide support. In some cases that means helping them understand things that never occur to most children. Horst cites one Silicon Valley father whose young teenage daughter was a talented musician and wanted to share some of her songs with friends online. Her father, however, made sure she filed for copyright protection before putting her music online.
Don’t be That Parent
There is a line not to cross, however. Parents shouldn’t inject themselves into their child’s use of social media by, for example, joining Facebook and friending their children and their children’s friends. This, Horst says, is the online equivalent “your parents being in the McDonald’s parking lot at 11 p.m.”
Or, as one teen said of her mother’s announcement on MySpace, in an effort to thwart predators, that her daughter was only 14: “Most of the time they do it for our well-being, but sometimes they just don’t know what they’re doing. It’s really sad.”
“Parents messing around in the friendship-driven space was seen as creepy by teens,” said Horst “When [adult involvement] is interest driven, it’s much more positive.”
Get Used to Not Being the Expert
In some ways, when the child is better with digital media than their parents, it destabilizes the “parent as absolute authority” dynamic. Children take on roles as experts in particular areas, like being the one who finds and records everyone’s favorite television shows.
Ultimately, Horst says, parents can fill an important role in their child’s digital life by doing many of the types of things parents often do. They can let go of the idea that they will always be the expert in the same way they do with teachers, coaches and other important adults.
“They can [develop] an awareness and sensitivity to the role that new media plays in their kids lives,” Horst says. “They can be supportive, without being in the middle of it all the time.”
Plus: In this video interview, media studies expert Henry Jenkins talks more about the suddenly equal role between child and parent in this brave new world.
Photo by: Brassard
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- Watch Them Play: Henry Jenkins on Why Parents Need to be Involved in Their Child’s Digital Life
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