Title: Buying in to Rules and Restrictions: Motivational Principles of Caregivers’ Technology Regulation
Abstract: Caregivers are increasingly involved in their children’s engagement with technology, commonly by restricting (i.e., limiting time) and moderating (i.e., guiding type of use) screen use. Caregivers also rely on technology to monitor children’s use and gain information for guiding their decisions. But the processes of tracking, restricting, and moderating do not live in a vacuum. Both how caregivers convey these activities to children, and the broader relational climate at home, can affect how children respond to parental attempts to help regulate their technology use. This talk will examine how the caregiver-child relationship and specific conversations that take place within it impacts adolescents’ reactions to parental technology monitoring, restrictions, and moderations. Adolescence is a particularly interesting time in a young person’s life to explore these issues because this age is characterized by increasing independence and chance of reactance or defiance. The young person can respond to requests and rules by ignoring or even countering them. Examining these processes, I will explore the role that parental autonomy-supportive (supportive of a sense of choice and demonstrating understanding) and controlling (pressuring or punitive) behaviours play and discuss key caregiver strategy for motivating adolescents’ buy-in with healthy technology use. I will present a series of studies conducted on caregiver reactions to adolescents’ cyberbullying, on caregiver communications when applying rules and restrictions, and on the importance of high-quality listening to young people. I will also explore future avenues in these literatures for understanding how parents can effectively regulate their young people’s technology use.
21 ноя 2023
