Children’s Internet Use, Self-Reported Life Satisfaction, and Parental Mediation in Europe: An Analysis of the EU Kids Online Dataset

Abstract

The present research examines how children’s time spent online is associated with their perceived life satisfaction accounting for their age, gender, socio-economic status (SES), emotional problems, country, and family environmental factors. This article is based on the data of the large scale cross-sectional EU Kids Online survey from 16 European countries with nationally representative samples of children aged 9–17 (N = 11,200, Mage = 13.3, SD = 2.36; 50.6% boys, 49.4% girls). The results indicated that the time children spent online appeared to have no considerable negative effect on their self-reported life satisfaction (SRLS). Comparatively, the positive effects of children’s SES and family environment accounted for 43% of the overall 50% of the variance in children’s SRLS scores. Considering that children’s SES alone accounted for 42% of the variance, children’s emotional problems, country of residence, and enabling parental mediation accounted for the remaining 3, 4, and 1% of the variance, respectively. In line with previous studies that urge caution when discussing the negative influence of time spent online on children’s mental health and overall wellbeing, the current findings suggest that social-ecological characteristics and how children use the Internet, need to be examined further.