Our research focused on the 10 – 13-year-old age group, making a transition from primary to high school and becoming more independent with their device use. Specifically, we feel that this 10-13 years age group is significant as children transition from child-user of technology to more independent and autonomous user.

Our study found that three important factors initiated and influenced this change:

  1. From no phone to owning their own phone. This resulted in longer time spent using a phone and more independent unsupervised use
  2. Primary school to high school: New friends and social aspects of high school means that children are often drawn into multiple new group chats, and new apps like Snapchat. Additionally, the more demanding elements of high school meant that children were required to use technology more extensively, in multiple new and different ways than in primary school.
  3. Beginning adolescence: Adolescence with its emphasis on social life meant that children often began using more social apps such as Snapchat and were often involved in multiple group chats; all for the purpose of getting to know new friends, being in new social groups, and being included.

A particular issue highlighted by our findings was that all three of these factors contributed to children being more social, meaning that parents were often considering the new challenge, as children transition to high school, of guiding acceptance of your children’s friend requests.Parents, across the board, had consistent approaches in place, often beginning with a feeling of trust that the child could approach their parents when a request came through.

The general rule shared by most parents in response to these requests was to work with their child to ascertain whether they knew the individual and if they were a friend at school.

Often if they were a friend, the parent would give permission to their child to add the person. If they were not known to the child or not a good friend, the common approach taken by parents was to not accept the request and then block the individual.

Finally, our findings indicated that this was a time of great change for children. Our research found that much of the discussion between parents and children in the 10–13-year age group focused on changes in apps and devices the child used. There were also key discussions between parents and children around what changes each anticipated happening in the future. These interactions often spoke to broad ideas of trust and communication, where parents trusted their children to tell them issues with changes to app and device usage.

Importantly we found that parents and children were equally concerned about not being able to handle changes in the child’s technology use, yet often didn’t realise the other felt this way. What worked well was when parent and child had open conversation that didn’t only focus on apps and devices but considered the concern and emotional aspects of change in technology use that lay ahead for the child.