Peer-reviewed article
Parental mediation of online interactions and its relation to adolescents’ contacts with new people online: the role of risk perception
Lenka Dědková, Vojtěch Mýlek ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how parents' strategies for managing their adolescents' online activities relate to whether teenagers contact new people online. The researchers surveyed over 1,000 Czech adolescents aged 11-17 and found that restrictive mediation (limiting internet use) reduced online contacts with strangers by increasing teenagers' awareness of the risks involved. However, active mediation (discussing safe internet use) had no effect on this behavior. The findings suggest that adolescents' perception of risk is an important mechanism through which parental restrictions work.
Key points
- Restrictive parental mediation decreased adolescents' contacts with new people online
- Restrictive mediation worked by increasing adolescents' risk perception of contacting strangers
- Active mediation (discussion and advice) had no direct or indirect effect on adolescents' online contacts
- Risk perception is an important explanatory mechanism in how parental mediation affects risky online behavior
- Study included 1,031 adolescents aged 11-17 from the Czech Republic
Limitations
The study is cross-sectional and cannot establish causation; it does not measure actual online harms experienced by adolescents, only their contacts with new people and perceived risk.
Abstract
To ensure their children's safety online, parents can utilize number of strategies, including active and restrictive parental mediation. Active mediation encompasses parents discussing and advising children about safe usage of the internet, whereas restrictive mediation means limiting children's internet usage. Both strategies aim to affect children's online behavior, especially to minimize online risks. Using a sample of 1031 adolescents aged 11–17 (54% females) and structural equation modeling, we focused on the active and restrictive parental mediation of online interactions and their connections to adolescents’ potentially risky online contacts with new people. In addition, we considered the indirect effect of parental mediation on adolescents’ behavior through adolescents’ risk perception. In this way, we captured one of the potential explanatory mechanisms through which the parental mediation's effect occurs. The results showed that restrictive mediation decreased contacts with new people by increasing adolescents’ risk perception of this activity. In contrast, active mediation had neither a direct nor indirect effect on adolescents’ online contacts. The results enrich the theory of parental mediation by showing that risk perception is an important factor to consider when researchers examine the effects of parental mediation on children's potentially risky online behavior.