Digital Parenting Styles

Parenting today is a challenge, and parenting in the digital age is even more so. With the advent of the internet, technology and social media, parents, and caregivers must navigate a new environment where devices and distractions are omnipresent.

Fortunately, there is more and more evidence-based research providing guidance to parents in the digital age. Alexandra Samuel, a digital political scientist with a Ph.D. from Harvard University, spent 2 years surveying 10,000 parents in Canada and the USA about how they manage technology in their homes. She concluded that there are 3 types of parenting styles: the Digital Enabler, the Digital Limiter, and the Digital Mentor.

Characteristics of the Digital Enabler

• These parents give complete freedom to their children when it comes to access to devices and the internet.
• Digital Enablers are mostly hands-off, trusting their children to make their own choices.

Characteristics of the Digital Limiter

• These parents keep their children away from the internet as much as possible and strictly limit screen time. '
• Digital Limiters closely monitor the content their children are exposed to.

Characteristics of the Digital Mentor

• These parents spend time online with their children, helping them develop their digital skills by experimenting and failing within a controlled environment.
• Digital Mentors are most likely to provide their children with tools and resources to navigate the online world and, more importantly, they are most likely to act as role models and demonstrate the behaviors that children should model online.

Whether you are a Digital Enabler or a Digital Limiter, you should try to incorporate some characteristics of the Digital Mentor. The mentors raise their children to be responsible digital citizens who are least likely to run into trouble online and also play an active role in shaping the digital citizen of tomorrow by consuming digital media with their children and guiding them through it.

How do these different parenting styles impact their children's online skills and behaviors?

Samuel's research shows that because the children of Digital Enablers explore the online world with no/limited guidance, they most often do not develop the appropriate skills for online behavior. On the other hand, the children of Digital Limiters fail to develop the skills for online communication and the necessary critical thinking to keep themselves out of trouble. As a result, once they get online, the children of Limiters are much more likely to engage with inappropriate material or to behave inappropriately.

Our job as parents is not to shy away from technology and trust that our children will figure it out by themselves nor to hide it from them, but to teach them how to use it as Digital Mentors. to help our children develop critical thinking about what they see online and also to coach them on how to behave online.

How can you engage with your children in your role as a Digital Mentor?

1. Whoever has a child should be like a child with him: Play with them as often as possible because playing has an important and positive effect on their childhood training and nurturing. As a Digital Mentor, you can play and explore different websites, platforms, and games with your child. You can use this time to start and maintain conversations about their online activities.
2. Show your children how to work things out by guiding them: Modeling good values in family, community, and society will help children reflect the same when online. Resilience is a key attribute for children and the ability to engage in critical thinking and find optimal solutions can help your child become a responsible digital citizen.
3. Promote kindness and empathy: One of the best ways to prevent cyberbullying is to promote kindness and empathy, in addition to the responsible use of the internet, technology, and social media. Kindness, helpfulness, and gratitude can be extended to online behavior.
4. Check your child’s destructive emotions: It is important that parents give freedom and independence to their children according to their capabilities so that they develop their initiative, innate independence, and self-trust. Digital parents must also be wary of allowing their children too much freedom where they may bring harm to themselves and to others.
5. Show your child the bigger picture: A good role model is someone who adjusts his children’s desires wisely and with the correct techniques.

By the end of this article, were you able to identify which category of digital parenting fits you? Which approach of digital citizenship would you like your kids to be raised on? if not yet, this is the time, as digital parenting is important as much as regular parenting, this will affect your children online activities, behaviors as well their future career, keep in your mind, in the coming years almost all business activities will be carried online, thus make your child ready for that change.