Do parents ‘know best’ when it comes to their teenaged children’s experiences of sexual content online?

Abstract

In 2010, the EU Kids Online project, and aligned AU Kids Online study, interviewed one parent and one child (9–16) from 25,542 families across 26 countries. Information gathered included parents’ awareness of their child’s experiences of sexual content online. This dataset has since been updated by recent ethnographic work in Australia and Ireland, capturing parents’ approaches to managing their children’s (11–17) digital engagement with sexual content. Parents identified risks and benefits in their children’s encounters with adult content online. This article concludes that parents do not judge the efficacy of their digital parenting around preventing their child from seeing restricted 18+ content or, indeed, knowing whether their child has encountered sexual content online. Instead, they adopt a nuanced approach that reflects knowledge of their child and the child’s relative maturity, with a view to supporting their child’s progressive development towards full digital and sexual citizenship.