Inside the Parent-Child-Technology Triad: An AI-Assisted Psychometric Approach to Discovering and Validating the Dimensions of Digital Parenting

As interactive digital technologies permeate family life, the parent-child-technology triad has become a central site of parenting practice and a critical concern for researchers and designers of family-oriented systems. Digital parenting captures how parents navigate, regulate, and co-experience digital technologies with their children. This study develops a multidimensional scale of digital parenting, grounded in parent-child-technology interaction and developed through an AI-assisted psychometric analysis. Analyses provided initial support for a six-dimensional structure (Positive Family Interaction, Negative Experiences and Concerns, Parental Supervision, Digital Agency, Instrument of Power, and Positive Experiences and Benefits). Convergent associations with parenting style and technology readiness supported the interpretations. The dimensions situate digital parenting within sociotechnical relationships and offer a lens for designing family-oriented interactive systems, AI-mediated environments, and parent-facing technologies. The instrument can support researchers and designers in examining family needs and informing the design of interventions that keep parental agency central in an increasingly AI-mediated world.