Digital Parenting in the Early Years: A Scoping Review

• In Event: Children, Parents, and Teachers in the Digital Age: Post-Pandemic Challenges and Preventative Solutions

Abstract

Objectives: The rapid development of digital media and online environments has transformed the lives of young children, the 'digital natives' of this digital era. This phenomenon poses new challenges and opportunities for parents, who need to adopt effective digital parenting practices to support their children's digital literacy and well-being. Digital parenting refers to parents' actions and strategies to facilitate their children's positive engagement with digital technologies while minimizing potential harm. This study aimed to conduct a scoping review of the existing literature on digital parenting in early childhood and identify the gaps and needs for future research and intervention. The study followed a systematic procedure to select and analyze relevant studies.
Methods: First, a search was conducted in three databases (Google Scholar, Scopus, and ERIC) using keywords related to digital parenting and early childhood. After removing duplicates, 40 studies were included based on four inclusion and exclusion criteria. Second, the search was updated until May 2023 to capture new publications. Third, the data from the selected studies were extracted and coded using a pre-established coding scheme. The coding scheme covered the following information: authors, publication year, research method, age of children participating, language, research design, and analysis findings. The first author performed the data extraction and coding independently. The results of the scoping review were synthesized and presented in four themes: (1) Parents' views on early digital use; (2) digital parenting impacts on digital use; (3) the impact of digital parenting on children; and (4) influential factors of digital parenting.
Results: A descriptive analysis of the published 40 studies from 2010 to 2023 revealed that: (1) parents’ view on early digital use varies from positive, negative, and mixed; (2) digital parenting impacts on digital use through parental modeling and the purpose of child's digital use; (3) the association was explored between digital parenting and children’s digital use in terms of the use frequency, digital literacy, parent-child relationships, social-emotional development, language development, behavior problems, and emergent literacy; (4) the influential factors include child-related factors, parental and family-related factors, the type of digital resources and religions factors.
Synthesized evidence from the 40 studies indicated that; (1) child age, parents' genders, educational level, technical skills, family structure, religions, and digital resources could affect digital parenting; (2) parents' digital use habits could predict children's frequency of using digital devices; (3) digital parenting practices affect children's digital use, learning and behaviors, language and social-emotional development and the parent-child relationship; (4) parents' beliefs and attitudes toward children's early use of digital devices might influence their children's willingness, ability and manner of engaging in the digital devices.
Implications: As all the studies were conducted using surveys with parental reports, future studies may need to involve observing parents' practices and monitoring children's digital use. Besides, the findings of this study suggested that teachers should be trained in early digital education, and policymakers should pay close attention to children's digital health and well-being to develop guidelines and regulations for digital parenting.

Authors

• Clara Yun Nga Choy, The Education University of Hong Kong

• Eva Yi Hung Lau, Education University of Hong Kong

• Dandan Wu, The Education University of Hong Kong