The study examined the role of digital parenting, explicitly focusing on the effectiveness of parental mediation regarding YouTube and online gaming. The analysis highlighted the complex yet distinct nature of media usage duration and dependency by employing a dyadic approach incorporating both children’s and parents’ perspectives. While restrictive mediation effectively reduced usage time on platforms like YouTube, it also appears to increase the risk of over-dependency in both YouTube and gaming contexts. The findings are especially noteworthy when children perceive their parents as active mediators, suggesting substantial benefits in mitigating dependency on both platforms. Parents’ perception of the appropriateness of their guidance in children’s media use was more effective in reducing usage time than in alleviating media dependency. Another significant finding revealed through this dyadic approach is the impact of smartphone use as a “digital pacifier” on increasing children’s digital media usage time and potentially leading to dependency.
Bai et al. (Mon,) studied this question.