Parental Mediation of Children’s Internet Usage: Parental Mediation Strategies in Iran

This research is an attempt to explore parental mediation strategies of their children’s Internet use, their effectiveness on preventing children’s use of prohibited Internet contents and parents’ attitudes towards the Internet effects on their children and how such attitudes influence their mediation strategies. Semi-structured in-depth interviews with ten fathers and ten mothers who have at least one child under the age of eighteen are conducted. Prominent categories of parental mediation strategies to control children’s usage of the Internet include: “restrictive mediation” (limiting the amount of time that children spend on using Internet as the result of negative attitudes towards the Internet effects), “instructive mediation” (warning children of negative effects of misuse of the Internet), and “social co-use” (sitting near children during Internet use to check the used contents). We also found that parents who are concerned about negative effects of the Internet exert more mediation over their children's Internet usage. Parents with high level of education, mothers, and parents of younger children apply more any of these three types of mediation. Finally, implications for Internet policy-making and suggestions for future research are provided.