‘Be careful to whom you speak online’: Parental mediation through pre-adolescents’ eyes

Abstract

When talking about devices with Internet connection, which children use for leisure and communication with their peers, and parental mediation, the literature identifies that, on this subject, children are still scarcely heard. This paper is the result of a doctoral dissertation where we listened to the critical perspectives of Portuguese pre-adolescents from middle and lower-middle income families. We aimed at analyzing two central topics: the influential role of the media in parents’ perceptions, and how pre-adolescents respond to parental mediation.