Our research found that parents would compare their own approach to the approach taken by other parents. This would mean that parents would feel pressured in what they did with their child’s use of digital technologies, based on what other parents were doing. Often this would relate to how strict or lenient parents were with their child’s use of technology.
Parents that were separated from their former partners reported that they found this particularly difficult. They reported that when separated, each approach became much more binary, represented as either good or bad, and with each parent’s contribution seen through a negative lens.
Also, a child will complain to their parents when they realise other children have different rules at their homes, particularly a more lenient version.
It is challenging for parents to decide they are on the ‘right’ track or if they need to change the rules, they have set in order to ‘align’ or ‘normalise’ with others.
Adding to this, our findings suggested that parents are confused by the fact that there are no so-called social norms that exist in regard to how digital technologies should be used for children (e.g., some states in Australia ban the use of phones and some don’t). This indicates that relying on society to set a standard of right or wrong or pursuing a set of rules is fruitless, and that could be confusing to parents.
In this situation, our findings were that knowledge is key. Our participants acknowledged that they didn’t know everything about technology, but that as their knowledge grew so did their confidence when it comes to parenting in this aspect. This also plays into parents’ strengths, and often reading about how others use technology can help one to affirm their own approach (just like any other aspects within parenting) and offer support to others especially for a child in this age group.