Families’ everyday experiences of Internet consumption
The home Internet is one site where most parents exercise some degree of care and control of their children, supervising both the quantity and quality of their children’s Internet experiences. When supervising their children’s access to particular Internet sites, parents in this study use a variety of strategies and approaches. These approaches range from a child-empowering “autonomous” approach (which recognises children’s autonomy and competencies) to more authoritarian approaches (with the use of more direct supervision in order to restrict and protect children). At the same time children may use the Internet to affirm their autonomy or independence from their parents, as parents in this study affirm:
He used to let me see the [onscreen] conversations but he won’t let me see them now. But that’s fine. If I come up and talk to him, he clicks the button and takes the screen off. (Kathy, pseudonyms used for interviewee contributions.)
Parents who tend to favour a child-empowering approach recognise their children’s autonomy, while at the same time having relatively high expectations of their children’s psychosocial competence and ability to handle a variety of media texts in a relatively sophisticated manner. When asked about her son’s access to adult Internet content, single mum Lisa indicated that Henry (17) had openly accessed Internet pornography a few years earlier. She expected (and allowed for) some exploration by her son. At the same time, she was not overly concerned that these materials would corrupt or harm him as she expected these explorations to be a transitory phase in his life:
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It doesn’t bother me at all. If he wants to do that then he can do it because he’ll get sick of it and I think initially it was “let’s see what we can do”. I remember once, he called me in and says “Mum, come and look at her boobs” and I looked at it and I said “it’s disgusting” or something and walked away and he laughed his head off. But I’ve never come in [lately] and found him looking at that stuff … It’s just not something that I’m … really worried about. It’s up to him. (Lisa)
As with this exchange, families often use media texts as tools in the socialisation of children. The provision of shared topics of conversation allows for discussions between generations:
Such materials serve an agenda-setting role … [playing] an important role in providing a socioemotional context for the household within which learning takes place. Technoculture is consequently a critical tool for socialisation … ICTs also construct a framework on (with) which to differentiate one member from another, to differentiate between generations, and to differentiate ways in which power and control can be asserted.
In this case, Lisa’s comment to her teenage son (“it’s disgusting”) and her actions (in walking away) doubtlessly provided Henry with a social cue, an alternative attitude to his choice of online content. Further, in initiating this exchange with his mother, Henry is likely to have been making a statement about his own autonomy and transition into (heterosexual) manhood.
In his interview, Henry openly acknowledged his earlier exploration of adult porn sites but (as his mother anticipated) he seems to have moved on from this particular phase. When asked whether he visited adult sites on the Internet Henry responded in his own succinct manner:
Like porn and stuff? Not really. I probably did when I was a bit younger but it’s not really very exciting.
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Interviewer: That was when you first got it [the Internet] or when?
Henry: Yeah, [two to three years earlier] all your friends come around and you check out the sites. It’s nothing exciting anymore.
Sexual experiences and knowledge are an important currency within teenage boy culture and like other teenage boys, Henry and his friends are likely to have used this technology in order to “negotiate their masculinity within the heterosexual economy of [their] peer group social relations”. In this case, it seemed to be a transitory stage within Henry’s peer (or community of interest) group and became less important as the teenagers grew into maturity.
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About the Authors
Donell Holloway is a PhD candidate and graduate research assistant at the School of Communications and Multimedia at Edith Cowan University, Perth. Her current research interests include media consumption in the context of everyday family life as well as aging and society.
Lelia Green is Professor of Communications, School of Communications and Arts, Edith Cowan University and co-Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Robyn Quin is professor of media studies and Dean of the Faculty of Communications and Creative Industries at Edith Cowan University. Her research interests are in young people’s use of new media.