Happiest streaming platform on earth: The role of presumed influence in the parental control decision process

Abstract

In accordance with the influence of presumed influence (IPI) model, parents’ views toward utilizing parental controls on video streaming platforms should be related to perceptions of content’s negative influence on children. Perceptions of child-friendliness of streaming platforms and family cohesion levels should also be expected to mediate and moderate, respectively, this relationship such that perceiving a platform as child-friendly would be negatively related to judgments of content’s negative effects on children as well as views toward using parental controls. The present survey of parents ( N = 806) generally revealed that parents believing content of specific ratings would negatively affect their child expressed greater likelihood of using parental controls on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+. In addition, this relationship was mediated by perceptions of platform child-friendliness but was not moderated at the second stage by family cohesion. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.