Personal Cell Phones among Children: Parental Perception of Content-Related Threats and Attempts to Control Them in a Lithuanian Sample

Autor: Donatas Austys, Ausma Sprudzanaitė, Rimantas Stukas
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: Behavioral Sciences, Vol 12, Iss 6, p 185 (2022)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2076-328X
DOI: 10.3390/bs12060185
Popis: Background and Objectives: Various content-related threats such as provocative content, disinformation, cyberbullying, or sexual and commercial messages might reach children by phone and have a negative effect on their health. Amongst parents who are able to control it, we aimed to assess parental attitudes towards the use of mobile phones among children and control measures taken. Materials and Methods: A total number of 619 parents of primary school children from a middle-sized town in Lithuania participated in this study. Parents anonymously filled out our original questionnaire. Distribution of the respondents was assessed according to control measures taken, threat awareness, and sociodemographic factors. Results: Most of the respondents (79.8%) thought that personal mobile phones might be harmful to children’s health, 99.5% of the parents used at least one control measure. Further, 91.9% of the respondents did not think that children might receive messages from strangers. Respectively, 85.5% and 95.2% of the parents thought that children do not receive offensive or sexual content messages. Many parents (25.5%) helped their children register to social networks. Parents with lower education and parents of younger children had lower awareness of threats (p < 0.05). Fathers, higher educated, single, and unemployed parents indicated application of fewer control measures (p < 0.05). Other sociodemographic factors were not related with threat awareness or control measures taken (p > 0.05). Conclusions: Nearly all parents of primary school children take measures in order to control their children’s usage of mobile phones but most of them underestimate content-related threats brought by mobile phones.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals
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