Parental media monitoring, prosocial violent media exposure, and adolescents' prosocial and aggressive behaviors

Keywords

media use, parental media monitoring, parental mediation, prosocial violence

Abstract

Prosocial violent media (e.g., media that combines both violent and prosocial content) is especially popular in entertainment media today. However, it remains unclear how parental media monitoring is associated with exposure to prosocial violent content and adolescent behavior. Accordingly, 1,193 adolescents were asked about parental media monitoring, media content exposure, and behavior. Main findings suggest that autonomy supportive restrictive monitoring was associated with lower levels of exposure to prosocial violent content, but only among older adolescents. Additionally, autonomy supportive restrictive monitoring was the only form of parental media monitoring associated with lower levels of violent content and higher levels of prosocial content, and autonomy supportive active monitoring was the only parental monitoring strategy that promoted prosocial behavior via exposure to prosocial media content. Discussion focuses on the importance of autonomy supportive parental monitoring, as well as the implications of parents encouraging their children to watch media with limited violent content—even if it is prosocial violent content.

Original Publication Citation

Holmgren, HG, Padilla‐Walker, LM, Stockdale, LA, Coyne, SM. Parental media monitoring, prosocial violent media exposure, and adolescents' prosocial and aggressive behaviors. Aggr Behav. 2019; 45: 671– 681.

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

2019-08-25

Permanent URL

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/6935

Publisher

Aggressive Behavior

Language

English

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

Family Life

University Standing at Time of Publication

Full Professor

Link to Full Text

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