In the article Parental Awareness and Monitoring of Adolescent Internet Use, they described four types of parental monitoring aspects of Internet use by children: parental supervision, communication and tracking, and adolescent disclosure. Recently there has been an increasing amount of Internet usage by adolescents which has led to increases in the concern of adolescent development.
The reason for the article was to get a better approach about parents' awareness of adolescents' use of the Internet and compare it by using parent-reports and adolescent self-reports. They focused on three different Internet behaviors: how frequently they used the Internet, the types of Web sites visited, and their involvement of risky Internet behaviors. Though there hasn't been a lot of evidence about parents' attitudes on the Internet, how much awareness they have about the Internet, and how much they monitor their child when using the computer.
Parents seem concerned about the different risks of the Internet and if they supervise their child or set rules regarding how much time if spent on the Internet. If parents increased in parent-adolescent interactions and parental regulation could lead to a decrease in cyberbullying. The authors have argued saying perhaps “parents are more complacent than is wise, assuming that rules are being followed when they are not or assuming that rules are not needed when they are” (Livingstone and Bober 2004, p. 43).
Kerr and Statin (2000) argue that even though many studies have shown that “parental monitoring” is related to measures of adolescents’ adjustment, these studies are actually measuring parental knowledge of adolescents’ activities and not the parents’ efforts in tracking and surveillance. Kerr and Statin (2000) examined three sources of parental knowledge: adolescents’ disclosure of information, parental solicitation (gathering information by asking adolescents themselves and talking with their friends, and friends’ parents), and parental control (controlling adolescents’ freedom to simply come and go as they please).
Adolescents typically acquire Internet competence much faster than their parents (Bjornstad and Ellingsen, 2004), they hypothesized parents to underestimate the frequency of Internet use, the visits to inappropriate websites, and the frequency of engaging in risky Internet behaviors in adolescents. Then it was compared to the situation of meeting someone face-to-face or meeting them online for the first time. Also, they thought parents would overestimate the amount of time they spent monitoring adolescents Internet use at home.
The purpose of the article Parental Mediation, Online Activities, and Cyberbullying was to learn more about the unknown effects of specific online activities and what role of parental mediation is related to the likelihood of being bullied. The main focus for the study was to investigate online behaviors and how they are associated with increased risks of being bullied and the different techniques of parental mediation decreases this risk.
The Internet is the most frequently used form of communication to met individuals (known or unknown to them) through interactive games, social networking sites, forums, and chat rooms. As adolescents start to expand their peer group they are exposed to unknown risks, negative social interactions with more frequent use of the Internet which could lead to bullying, harassment, and sexual solicitation. The more frequently an adolescent uses the Internet can lead to a type of tool for offensive and harmful behaviors.
They talk about parental mediation as the activities carried out by parents to protect their children from exposure to online dangers. The evidence that was found in some studies, which have reported children whose parents monitored their online activities tend to be less likely to disclose personal information. Also, they're less likely to start conversations with strangers, and to search for websites that are inappropriate.
They define cyberbullying as willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of e-mail, cell phone, instant messaging, and defamatory Web sites. Cyberbullying can be formed as an act of aggression that can take the form of purposeful harassment, such as making unwanted, derogative, nasty, or threatening comments through electronic communications or spreading rumors, short clips, or altered photos that are offensive or embarrassing the victim by posting them on a Web site.
Also in the routine-activities theory is guardianship, which is the presence of people or actions that decrease the risk of victimization. Guardianship can be described in two ways: a persons' presence or an electronic device, such as a closed capture camera aid in potential offenders from perpetrating in the act. Parental mediation has been involved in media research for understanding influences of television on different audiences attitudes and behaviors.
They feel that the media content viewed on the Internet may influence adolescents' attitudes and behaviors. Even though there are various types of parental mediation, they use only two techniques: (a) Restrictive mediation involves limiting the child's amount of viewing time and the programs watched (The use of electronic devices and web sites they are exposed to was one of the measures in the study). (b) Evaluation mediation represents open discussion of issues related to Internet use,evaluation of content, and joint creation of rules regarding the amount of time for Internet use and Web sites that are or are not allowed (This is represented by the parent putting the computer in a common area in order to observe them).
The routine-activities theories have resulted in some types of Internet activities and increase the chance of victimization. If you participated in social networking sites, you were more likely to have a risk of being bullied. Adolescents who had online profiles displaying their personal information, contact information, and different characteristics describing you were more at risk for potential offenders, strangers to start conversations. An adolescents mature conception of trust may have not developed in young children, and can increase the risk of being cyberbullied.
One of the important findings was rules about Web sites that they were allowed to visit decreased their risk of being bullied. It mentioned the importance of parents that engage in conversations about being victimized, online bullying, and the risk of going into chat rooms. The awareness of parents educating adolescents about cyberbullying can help with decreases the amount of online bullying and talking to strangers they don't know.