Young children and digital media in the home: parents as role models, gatekeepers, and companions

This chapter presents an overview of the digital practices of young children (under 8 years old) in the home. At such an early age, parents are the main mediators of the contact with digital media, thus paying a preponderant role in shaping young children's practices, perceptions and attitudes. In this chapter, we present partial results of a European-scale qualitative project that followed a methodology based on grounded theory, using interviews to families as method. Our findings reveal different roles played by the parents – role models, gatekeepers, companions, and supervisors. We also found that these different roles are related to the parenting style and also to the parents' own digital practices, and most importantly to perceptions and attitudes towards digital media.