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There is growing concern over online privacy in today’s digital worlds, in part due to the nature of social media, which encourages the disclosure of personal information. Such concerns have resulted in a significant amount of research, so far focused on adults’ and teenagers’ perceptions of privacy and privacy management. This study aims to explore how children perceive online privacy. It addresses three research questions: RQ 1: What are children’s views of online privacy? RQ 2: What are parents’ views of online privacy? Do their views on privacy influence how they deal with their children’s privacy? RQ 3: What are the benefits and disadvantages of different Internet parental mediation strategies for children’s online privacy? Twenty-six semi-structured one-to-one interviews and ten focus group sessions were conducted with fifty-seven pupils aged 9 to 11 years old (Primary 6 and Primary 7), from one school in Scotland. Additionally, 8 parents were interviewed to understand how their perceptions of privacy influenced their Internet parenting strategies. This study has three overarching findings. The first overarching finding is related to children’s and parents’ views about the Internet as an unsafe place, occasionally leading parents to deploy restrictive and monitoring Internet parental mediation strategies. Second, children view privacy as more difficult to achieve online than offline for two main reasons: (1) the Internet is a ‘bigger space’ populated by a massive number of ‘people’, most of whom they do not know nor have they ever seen (‘strangers’), and (2) there are certain difficulties in managing the privacy settings of social networking sites. The third finding is that trust, autonomy and privacy are interrelated. Trust reduce privacy concerns, encouraged for two-way information sharing between children and parents, with an expectation that parents will be able to help identify potential and also unexpected online issues, and necessary advice and safety precautions can be taught to children. As a result, children will potentially be able to manage their online activities in an increasingly autonomous way. Trust is important not only in interpersonal relationships, but also for building confidence for contexts in which we do not have any prior knowledge, such as with strangers or with the providers of online platforms.

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This thesis investigates what parental mediation strategies parents of children under twouse and what factors are involved that influence their decisions. To find that out, it isalso of interest to this work how these parents integrate media in daily routines withtheir children and for what purposes they turn to digital devices. To find out about theirmediation strategies, six families kept a media diary and ten first-time parents wereinterviewed as follow-up to the diaries. The results of both methods showed that parentsof children under two mainly used restrictive mediation, active mediation and distantmediation. Restrictions regarded time, content, devices, and location. However, theserestrictions were no clear formulated rules yet but affiliate to the high awareness that theparticipants stated regarding media use with their children, probably also influenced bymoral panics. The same applies to distant mediation: even though media was used inmoments when parents needed to do e.g. housework, most parents refrained fromreferring to media as a ‘babysitter’. The most intriguing finding is that first-time parentsrestrict their own media use so that their child’s screen time is as little as possible.Acting as role models, parents would hide their devices when their child becomes awareor look at it somewhere where their child cannot see it. Factors that influencedmediation strategy decisions were high awareness also due to official recommendations,concerns of parents, positive notions towards media use, tendency to show more aschild grows, and negative emotions connected to media. With these findings, this thesiscontributes to contemporary research on mediation strategies of parents under twowhich is still scarce now but needs to be considered in further research as this studyproves.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between teenagers’ use of mobile Internet devices and their involvement in risky digital behaviors, including problematic Internet use, exposure to pornography, and participation in sexting. A crosssectional correlational design using a sample (N = 97) of teens aged 13-18 was used. Linear regression analyses revealed that teens using smartphones as their primary source of Internet access were most likely to receive sexting requests, while teens using computers to access the Internet were most likely to intentionally view pornography. Additionally, teens who used multiple mobile devices to connect to the Internet and teens who had owned at least one mobile Internet device for longer periods of time were most likely to have higher levels of problematic Internet use. Contextual factors such as age, gender, family structure, religious commitment, attachment to parents, and parental monitoring of online activities were also examined to determine their relationship to the aforementioned outcomes. Consistent with adolescent developmental trajectories, older teens reported higher rates of pornography exposure and sexting requests, and indicated a greater willingness to participate in sexting. However, younger teens who used smartphones as their primary source of Internet access were just as likely as older teens to have received requests to sext. Males had higher rates of pornography exposure and were more willing than females to send sexual messages to their significant other. Females, on other hand, were asked to sext more frequently. Teens with high levels of religious commitment had the lowest levels of pornography exposure and participation in sexting. Among the parental variables examined, teens’ attachment to their parents was most significantly related to the studies’ outcomes. Strongly attached teens had lower levels of problematic Internet use, pornography exposure, and participation in sexting than their peers who were not as strongly attached to their parents.

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This document presents a dissertation research study that examined parents of preteens and the protectionist and empowerment Internet mediation and media literacy strategies they reported using to guide their child's use of the Internet. Parents' use of protectionist and empowerment strategies, their confidence level in enacting these strategies, their attitudes about efficacy of these strategies, and the relationship among their attitudes about children's use of the Internet to these areas were examined. The study used an online survey (N=236) of parents who have preteens with Internet access at home, and parent interviews from a sample of the survey respondents (N=40), to gather data from a nationwide sample of parents. Parents were asked questions about their use of, confidence in, and perceptions of effectiveness of protectionist and empowerment Internet mediation strategies, what topics related to Internet use they have discussed with their child, and overall their attitudes about the Internet and children. The survey results show that the majority of parents use a combination of protectionism and empowerment strategies, but more heavily use protectionist Internet mediation overall. Parents reported high confidence in using most of the strategies, with slightly less (but still notably high) confidence in using empowerment strategies. Even though parents reported feeling confident using empowerment strategies, they used them much less than protectionist strategies. Protectionist strategies were also ranked as more effective than empowerment ones. Parents' attitudes about the Internet were also associated with behaviors. Parents' level of comfort in using the Internet and computers was positively associated with their overall engagement in their preteens' Internet use, whether protectionism or empowerment. Parental attitude about the Internet being a good place for their child was associated with the likelihood to use protectionist strategies. However, parents who did not believe the Internet was a good place for their kids tended to talk about more Internet behavior topics with their child. The interviews with parents revealed a typology of protectionist and empowerment strategies with three major themes and several subthemes. The first theme included strategies for monitoring the Internet, the second illustrated the types of protectionist and empowerment behaviors parents use, and the third theme encompassed the values that emerged regarding parents' family communication and roles, comparisons to other families, and hopes about the potential benefits of the Internet in their child's life. Among the three themes parents voiced their life experiences, feelings, and concerns and how those influenced their decisions around protectionism or empowerment. Similar to the survey results, the interviews show that most parents used protectionist strategies, with the most widely used strategies including "POS" (parent over shoulder), and having the child use the Internet in a public space in the home. Few parents who were interviewed co-surf online with their preteens, ask questions about the websites their kids visit, or encourage their kids to create things online. However, parents who worked in fields related to media and technology were more likely to use empowerment strategies. The interviews revealed that parents' use of protectionist or empowerment strategies is complex, and is interwoven with their attitudes, values, concerns, and hopes for the potential of the Internet for their child. This study challenges the field to consider four myths about parents and Internet mediation, including: 1) Parents are either protectionist or empowerment, but not usually both; 2) Parents who are more confident using Internet mediation strategies will use them more often; and 3) Parents who think the Internet is not a good place for kids are more likely to use protectionist strategies; and 4) Parents who are uncomfortable with technology are more likely to use protectionist strategies. Possible reasoning for these misconceptions about parents, and how this speaks to research in the field, are explored. This study encourages parent media literacy education efforts to include a balance and progression in protectionist and empowerment strategies by proposing a Stair Steps of Parent Internet Mediation framework. This framework explains an aspirational process for parent education around the Internet to guide future efforts for those who work in parent media literacy education. / Mass Media and Communication