Abstract

As the world evolves into a media saturated environment, the focus of many studies have been the negative effects of media on children and adolescents. For at least the past two decades, researchers have explored how parental involvement in their child's media consumption can influence child outcomes. Parental mediation of media includes restrictive mediation, active mediation, and co-viewing. Three meta-analyses, one for each type of mediation, reviewed a total of 69 studies. Each analysis assessed the effectiveness of parental mediation of media on five pertinent child outcomes: media use, aggression, substance use, sexual behavior, and negative health outcomes. The overall results indicated small, but significant relationships between child outcomes and restrictive mediation (r+ = .07), active mediation (r+ = .01), and co-viewing (r+ = .09). Effects on certain child outcomes were stronger than others. Parents have the ability to mitigate some of the adverse effects through parental mediation of media by creating rules for media use: discussing character's choices and central themes and consuming media together. Finally, several gaps in the existing literature were identified and discussed.

Degree

MS

College and Department

Family, Home, and Social Sciences; Marriage, Family, and Human Development

Rights

http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2015-05-01

Document Type

Thesis

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd7714

Keywords

parental mediation, parental monitoring media time, media content, aggression, substance use, sexual behavior, obesity, body image, restrictive mediation, active mediation, co-viewing

Language

english

Download

Share

COinS