Styles of Digital Parental Mediation: A Multi-Group Person-Centered Approach

Parental mediation of digital technology is influential within the dynamic and bidirectional process of digital socialization in which contemporary parents and children engage. Utilizing a person-centered approach and multidimensional measure of digital parental mediation strategies, four latent profiles of digital parental mediation styles were identified: one “high” and one “average” digital meditation style, and two “low” involvement styles, demarcated by parents’ emphasis on mediation by modeling. These profiles were generalizable across mothers and fathers, and differentially associated with relevant covariates (including parent income and race, child age, parent and child screen time, and parents’ technology-related confidence and worry). This study demonstrates the heterogeneity of digital parental mediation styles among a representative sample of parents in the United States. The current study utilizes a person-centered approach to identify digital parenting styles, based on attitudes about four domains of digital parental mediation. With a mixture modeling framework, the study is one of the first to employ tests of profile similarity to determine that subgroups were statistically similar across mothers and fathers. The study found four styles of digital parental mediation: High Digital Mediators, Average Digital Mediators, Moderately Involved, and Digitally Uninvolved. Results mirrored general parenting styles to a limited degree, as we found support for authoritative and uninvolved styles, but not for authoritarian nor indulgent parenting styles. Parent screen time, child screen time, the presence of an adolescent in the home, and parents’ technology-related confidence were positively related to membership in the more engaged digital mediation profiles.