Styles of Digital Parenting by Child Age Group

Alexandra Samuel / Springboard of America and Angus Reid Forum

Digital limiters, by contrast, focus on minimizing their kids’ use of technology. This group was another third of the parents surveyed, though nearly half of parents of preschoolers take the limiting approach. Heeding widespread concerns about the impact of technology use on children’s attention spans and interpersonal relationships, limiters take every opportunity to switch off screens.

But there’s a third group of parents who recognize that if the “off” switch is the only tool parents use to shape their kids’ experience of the Internet, they won’t do a very good job of preparing them for a world in which more and more technologies are switched on every year. Digital mentors instead take an active role in guiding their kids onto the Internet. They not only make up a third of parents overall, but a little more than a third of parents in each age range—suggesting that this is an approach to digital-age parenting that can actually sustain a family long-term, from the time baby first lays her hands on a touchscreen all the way until she heads off for college.

Percentage of Parents Who Provide Technology Guidance at Least Once a Week

Alexandra Samuel / Springboard America

Mentors, in fact, may be the parents who are most successful in preparing their kids for a world filled with screens, working actively to shape their kids’ online skills and experiences. A survey of more than 700 American parents from within my larger dataset found that mentors are more likely than limiters to talk with their kids about how to use technology or the Internet responsibly—something that half of mentors do at least once a week, compared to just 20 percent of limiters. They’re also more likely to research specific devices or programs for their kids: 44 percent of mentors do that at least once a week, compared to 31 percent of enablers and 14 percent of limiters. They’re also the most likely to connect with their kids through technology, rather than in spite of it: 58 percent of mentors play video games with their kids every week, compared to 42 percent of enablers and 30 percent of limiters.

That effort seems to pay off. In a survey that asked parents about where their kids get into trouble online, I found that among school-aged kids, children of limiters who are most likely to engage in problematic behavior: They’re twice as likely as the children of mentors to access porn, or to post rude or hostile comments online; they’re also three times as likely to go online and impersonate a classmate, peer, or adult. Shielding kids from the Internet may work for a time, but once they do get online, limiters’ kids often lack the skills and habits that make for consistent, safe, and successful online interactions. Just as abstinence-only sex education doesn’t prevent teen pregnancy, it seems that keeping kids away from the digital world just makes them more likely to make bad choices once they do get online.