Digital technology and grandparenting
About the project
This project will explore how grandparents manage children’s use of digital technology when caring for them. Parents often employ mediation strategies to moderate children’s use of digital technology. Given how pervasive digital technology is and the extent to which children use them for entertainment and education, this study will investigate whether mediation is consistent between parents and grandparents.
Exploring how grandparents approach mediation of technology use by their grandchildren in our connected society will provide a wholistic view of the developmental niche of the digital child.
Project aims
- Investigate the particular role played by grandparents in supporting young children’s digital media use, relating this to the family context and to the presence or absence of one or more parents as primary caregivers.
- Explore challenges associated with grandparents inducting and supporting young children’s engagements with digital media.
- Examine the comparatively privileged, but complex, position of non-primary caregiver grandparents in negotiating grandchildren’s media use with the grandchildren themselves and with primary caregivers: the grandchildren’s parents (the grandparents’ children).
- Interrogate whether there are specific challenges inherent in the in-law relationship between a grandparent, a primary caregiver, and the grandchild (for example, reflecting digital grand/parenting differences that reflect parents’ differences in digital parenting styles).
Project design
The project is based in medical anthropology approaches and adopts a social constructionism framework. Data collection methods include:
- in-depth interviews with grandparents.
- participant observation engagement in digital media use by children and/mediated by grandparents.
- video recordings of media use made by grandparents/grandchildren.
- transcriptions of data sources.
Thematic analysis will interrogate transcribed materials to investigate common and divergent themes. Case studies will be used to explicate data.