Balancing Participation and Risks in Children's Internet Use: The Role of Internet Literacy and Parental Mediation

Abstract

This study analyzed the survey data from 566 Korean children between the ages of 10 and 15 to examine the role of Internet literacy and parental mediation in solving the dilemma of children's Internet use. According to the findings, children's online participation was associated with increased exposure to online risks. The association was moderated by Internet skills and parental restrictive mediation; that is, for children with a high level of Internet skills and for children who received more restrictive mediation, the positive association between online participation and online risks weakened, but was still significant. The limited roles of Internet skills and parental restrictive mediation in children's Internet use were discussed in the context of media education.

Introduction

In regard to the Internet, Korea is a highly networked country, ranked fifth worldwide in terms of high-speed Internet use, with >80 percent of its population using the Internet. A majority of adolescents are Internet users, with 99.9 percent of adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19 years reporting Internet use.¹ However, the dilemma associated with children's Internet usage is that the more they partake in online activities, the more they are exposed to risks including harmful content and inappropriate interactions.^2,3 On one hand, children and adolescents develop intimacy with their peers by engaging in online communication and experiment with diverse techniques related to self-presentation and self-expression.^4–6 On the other hand, these online activities increase the likelihood that they will be exposed to strangers and may be subjected to cyberbullying and sexual solicitation.^6,7 Moreover, the rapid expansion of the uses of social network services augments the possibility of commercial or sexual exploitation of personal information and communications that are easily obtained through these social platforms.⁸ In spite of the interconnection between benefits and risks, most previous studies have separately examined the benefits or risks that children and adolescents may experience from Internet usage. Based on recent findings that teenagers' beneficial activities online are strongly related to exposure to risks,³ the current study examines the role of Internet skills and parental mediation in balancing both online opportunities and risks for children and young adolescents.

Internet literacy

Internet literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create online content.^3,9,10 This ability is considered necessary not only to protect children from the negative influences of the media,¹⁰ but also to decrease the inequality in information and to help children fully participate in creative and social activities.^11,12 While media literacy is generally considered an outcome of media education, children develop a degree of competence in handling the media in accordance with their overall levels of cognitive, emotional, and social development; their experience in the world in general; and their specific experiences with the media.¹³ Although it is difficult to identify the distinctive contributions of these three factors to the development of Internet literacy, it is clear that children's overall experience with the Internet both influences and is influenced by their Internet skills. Identifying children's competence in accessing, analyzing, evaluating, and creating online content is a prerequisite for any effort to address gaps in participation.¹³

Members of the younger generation are often referred to as “digital natives” and are presumed to be technologically savvy. However, empirical studies have found that variations in Internet skills and usage exist within the Net Generation, and Internet skills are related to the types of usage and differences in levels of participation in online activities.^3,14–17 It has been documented that more skilled users tend to engage in more online activities including communication and informal learning than do less skilled users. For example, Hargittai and Hinnant¹⁶ have found that Internet skills are related to increased participation in capital-enhancing activities, such as seeking political information, exploring job opportunities, and obtaining consulting information in regard to health services.

Meanwhile, Internet skills are also associated with online risks, but interestingly, the direction of this association is somewhat contradictory to our expectations. Unlike our expectation that Internet skills would reduce online risks, Livingstone and Helsper³ have found that Internet skills are positively and indirectly associated with exposure to online risks as a result of increased online participation. Due to the strong correlation between online participation and online risks, more skilled users are more likely to engage in online activities, and as a result, they are more likely to be exposed to online risks such as contact risks and privacy infringement. Thus, the current study suggests that we should examine the moderating effect of Internet literacy on the positive association between participation and risks. We hypothesize that the association between participation and risks will be weaker for more skilled users than for less skilled users.

Parental restrictive mediation

Parental mediation refers to the interactions that parents have with their children in regard to media usage.¹⁸ To be more specific, it can be defined as any strategic parental intervention that is meant to control, supervise, or interpret media content to which their children may be exposed.¹⁹ The literature on the parental mediation of television has identified three forms of mediation strategy: restrictive mediation, co-viewing, and active mediation.^20–22 Restrictive mediation, which is also known as limit setting or rule-making, refers to parental control or regulation of children's television viewing in terms of time and content. Parent-child co-viewing refers to both the parent and child watching television together as a common interest or family activity. Active mediation refers to having the parents discuss, comment, interpret, and evaluate the television programs their children are watching in order to increase an understanding of the overall message the program is trying to convey.

While parental mediation of the Internet should collectively consider these different strategies, the restrictive strategies tend to be the most preferred and practiced among Korean parents. According to studies conducted with Korean participants, one of the most prominent mediation strategies is controlling the amount of time children spend online. Additionally, parents limit the disclosure of personal information, prohibit chatting and playing games, monitor their child's Internet use, limit their access to Websites through filtering software, and use a log-in system. Parents report that they struggle to prevent their children from being exposed to harmful content and becoming addictive to online games, particularly when they think their child lacks proper self-regulation.^23,24

However, the effectiveness of these protective methods still needs further investigation. A small number of recent studies have suggested that parental restrictions may be effective in reducing online risks.^7,25–28 For example, Wolak et al.⁷ have found that the use of filtering and blocking software is negatively associated with unwanted exposure to sexual materials. Additionally, Livingstone and Helsper²⁷ have found that restricting online interactions, such as e-mail, chatting, and instant messaging, is negatively related to exposure to online risks. Mesch²⁸ has also reported that teens are less likely to experience cyberbullying when they have parents who monitor the Websites they visit. However, these parental restrictions may reduce online risks at the expense of the opportunities that children and adolescents could experience in online interactions. Thus, the current study examines the effects of restrictive mediation on a child's online participation as well as the exposure to online risks and its moderating effect on associations between online participation and online risks. Although online participation is positively related to online risk, the strength of this relation may be moderated by the level of parental mediation. We hypothesize that the association between participation and risk will be weaker for children who receive more parental restrictive mediation.

Methods

Sample and procedures

Children from fourth to ninth grade were recruited using a quota sampling method based on location, gender, and school grade. Under parental informed consent, the child and parent interviews were conducted separately with the only additional presence of a trained interviewer. Parents were asked to respond to questions about their restrictive mediation techniques, and children were asked to respond to questions regarding online participation, online risks, Internet literacy, and demographic variables. A total of 600 parent-child pairs responded to the survey. Since the data had been collected through an in-home, face-to-face interview, most respondents among the parent sample were mothers, and only 34 respondents were fathers. To avoid the compounding effect of parental gender with regard to mediation strategies, only the data collected from 566 mothers and their children were used for the current study. The sample of children consisted of 290 boys (51.2 percent) and 276 girls (48.8 percent) who were between the ages of 10 and 15. The average age of mothers was 41 years (ages ranged from 31 to 53), and 45 percent of them had at least some college education.

Measures

Online participation

Online participation was measured based on Jenkins' discussion of participatory culture.¹¹ The survey included items regarding expressive and creative activities, sharing creations, circulation of content, and collaborative problem solving. Specifically, children were asked to answer using a binary response whether they had performed the following activities on the Internet during the previous month: posted their writings on their blog or personal homepage (29.7 percent), posted their writings on a café or a club Website (28.8 percent), expressed their opinions regarding social issues (28.4 percent), linked useful information to their blog (21.7 percent), recommended useful information to other users (21.6 percent), responded to questions posted by other users (29.0 percent), commented on other users' postings (34.3 percent), and wrote comments in regard to products they purchased (19.1 percent). A composite scale was used to record the number of participatory activities (α=0.89).

Online risks

Online risks assessed content risks, privacy, and contact risks according to the recommendations of Livingstone and Helsper^3,27 and Valcke et al.²⁶ Children were asked to answer using a binary response whether they had encountered risks on the Internet during the previous month. The risks included accidental or intentional exposure to pornographic content (14.8 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively), accidental or intentional exposure to violent content (19.2 percent and 9.0 percent, respectively), giving out personal information (28.3 percent), and giving out information about parents (21.0 percent). The risks also included contact risks such as online communication with strangers (22.3 percent) and face-to-face communication with someone first encountered online (6.7 percent). A composite scale recorded the number of risks encountered (α=0.77).

Internet literacy

The approach that measures skill-based Internet literacy varies across studies. These measures include proficiency with specific online activities, familiarity with Internet-related knowledge including MP3, refresh, download, and PDF, and a global measure of Internet self-efficacy. However, it is noted that a global measure of Internet self-efficacy is less valid than a composite scale measuring the abilities for specific online activities or familiarity with Internet-related knowledge.^3,29 Further, since a measure of familiarity with Internet-related knowledge may be a better proxy of actual Internet skills restricted to searching online information,²⁹ in the current study, Internet literacy is measured as a composite scale of proficiency for specific online activities, including competence related to accessing and evaluating information and competence related to online communication and interaction. Children were asked to rate their abilities to find the information they needed online, exchange e-mails, manage a blog or a personal homepage, play online games, upload documents, select useful information, evaluate online information, search for news, and involve themselves in activities of an online community on a scale ranging from 1 (very poor) to 5 (very good) (M=3.20, SD=0.69) Internal consistency for this measure was high in this sample (α=0.87).

Parental restrictive mediation

A measure of restrictive mediation was used to assess the strategies that parents use to limit their child's Internet use or prohibit certain online activities. The strategies assessed in the present study were based on surveys from previous studies.^3,24,30,31 Parents were asked how often they practice the following strategies and responded using a five-point scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always). The nine items included time restriction, restricting access to content, restricting disclosure of personal information, limiting membership registration, prohibiting online shopping, online gaming or online chatting, use of a computer log-in system, and installation of filtering software. A composite scale of mediation was constructed by averaging the scores of these nine items (M=3.29, SD=0.68). Internal consistency of this measure for this study was adequate (α=0.79).

Results

All children in the study reported having used the Internet at least once in the past month. The average time a child spent online per day on weekdays was 72 minutes, and the average time spent per day during the weekend was 142 minutes. Inter-correlations of the variables of interest are summarized in Table 1. As predicted, online participation was positively correlated with exposure to online risks (r=0.46, p<0.001).

Table 1.

Inter-Correlations of Online Participation, Online Risks, Internet Skills, and Parental Restrictive Mediation

	1	2	3	4
1. Online participation	—
2. Online risks	0.46^***	—
3. Internet skills	0.34^***	0.22^***	—
4. Parental restrictions	−0.09^*	−0.09^*	0.01	—

p<0.05, ^***p<0.001.

Table 2 presents the results of the regression analyses. The first model was the regression of a child's Internet literacy and parental mediation on the child's participation online, controlling for a child's age and gender, and parental education level and family income. The results indicated that the more skilled the children were, the more likely they were to engage in participatory activities when compared with less skilled children (β=0.32, p<0.001). Children who received more parental mediation were less likely to engage in online participation than were children who had received less parental mediation (β=−0.08, p<0.05). The second model was the regression of a child's Internet literacy and parental mediation on a child's exposure to online risks. Results showed that more skilled children were more likely to be exposed to online risks than less skilled children (β=0.19, p<0.001), and children who received more parental mediation were less likely to be exposed to online risks than children who received less parental mediation (β=−0.08, p<0.05).

Table 2.

Multiple Regression on Online Participation and Risks

	Online participation β	Online risks β	Online risks β
Gender(boys=0)	0.09^*	−0.12^**	−0.16^***
Age (school grade)	0.11^**	0.07	0.03
Mother's education	0.01	−0.03	−0.03
Income level	0.05	0.03	0.00
Internet skills	0.32^***	0.19^***	0.03
Parental restrictive mediation	−0.08^*	−0.08^*	−0.04
Online participation			0.48^***
Participation×Internet skills			−0.11^**
Participation×Restrictive mediation			−0.13^***
	R²=0.15^***	R²=0.08^***	R²=0.27^***

p<0.05, ^**p<0.01, ^***p<0.001.

The third regression model included the interaction terms of online participation with Internet literacy and parental mediation in order to determine whether Internet literacy and parental mediation moderate the association between online participation and online risks, which is the main research question of the current study. The results indicated that the direct effects of Internet literacy and parental mediation on online risks disappeared when online participation was treated as a predictor of online risks. However, moderating effects were found such that there were significant interaction effects between Internet literacy and online participation on online risks (β=−0.11, p<0.01) and between parental mediation and online participation on online risks (β=−0.13, p<0.001).

For post hoc analyses of interaction effects, children in the sample were divided into two groups based on the mean value of their Internet literacy. As seen in Figure 1, the positive association between online participation and online risks was weaker for children with a high level of Internet skills than for children with a low level of Internet skills. The sample was then divided into two groups based on the mean value of parental restrictive mediation in order to determine whether there is an interaction effect between parental restrictions and online participation on online risks. As seen in Figure 2, the level of parental restrictions also moderated the association between online participation and online risks. That is, the positive association between online participation and online risks was weaker in the children who had received more parental restrictive mediation.

FIG. 1.

Interaction of online participation and Internet skills on online risks.

FIG. 2.

Interaction of online participation and restrictive mediation on online risks.

Discussion

The purpose of the current study was to examine the relationships among online participation, online risks, Internet literacy, and parental restrictive mediation. Previous studies on children's Internet use tend to separately address opportunities and risks. Research on Internet literacy has mainly been concerned with the association between Internet skills and participation gaps, and research on parental mediation has examined its effects on reduced exposure to online risks. However, the current study focused on the moderating effects of Internet literacy and parental mediation on the interconnection online participation and exposure to online risks. According to the findings, a positive association between participatory online activities and exposure to online risks was found among Korean young adolescents, which is consistent with a previous United Kingdom national survey of children and young people aged 9–19 years.³ Interestingly, Internet skill and parental restrictive mediation moderated the positive relation. In other words, the online participation of children who were more skilled and who had received more parental restrictions was more weakly associated with exposure to online risks. Collectively, these findings emphasize the roles of Internet skills and parental restrictive mediation in minimizing exposure to online risks due to online participation.

However, the association between online participation and online risks was still significantly positive even for children who were more skilled and who had received more parental restrictions. This may indicate the limited effects of both skill-based Internet literacy and restriction-based parental mediation in disconnecting children's participatory activities and exposure to risks online. As Buckingham has proposed,^13,32 such findings may suggest that media education for Internet literacy should include not only skills for access to content, but also the ability to regulate access by fostering an awareness of potential risks and utilizing technical tools such as filtering software. Furthermore, media education should teach a critical understanding of online content in terms of representation and creating messages with the consideration of managed self-disclosure and ethical issues. Parental practices regarding their children's media use should also be extended from restrictions as an external control to a parent-child interaction that supports self-regulation and discernible participation.

The limitations of this study should be considered for future research. First, while the approach to measure Internet literacy or skills varies across studies, the current study measured Internet literacy as a composite scale of competence with specific online activities. Future research may want to consider a multidimensional approach based on the level of skills (i.e., operational skills, formal skills, information skills, and strategic skills),³³ based on the specific goal or domain of Internet literacy (i.e., access, understanding, and production),³² or based on a hierarchy of cognitive skills according to the pattern of Internet usage (i.e., communication, information, recreation, commercial use, and technical aspect).³⁴ Second, a more elaborate approach for assessing online opportunities and online risks is needed. After comprehensively surveying and categorizing the diverse opportunities and risks that children can experience and encounter, it is clear that future research should examine the connection between opportunities and risks by type and also investigate whether the effects of parental mediation and Internet literacy depend on the type of online risks to which the children may be exposed. Finally, due to the nature of the sample, the findings of this study are limited to Korean children between the ages of 10 and 15 years. These children are in the developmental stage during which they explore their identities through diverse social activities, including online interactions, but are still under parental influence. The generalizability of these results to other countries and cultures may be limited, and replication and extension of these findings requires future research. Despite these limitations, given the importance of the role of Internet skills and parental mediation in children's Internet use across countries, the approach of the current study provides additional insights for future research that is concerned with balancing online opportunities and risks for children and adolescents.

Footnotes

Disclosure Statement

No competing financial interests exist.

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