Grandparents can play a critical role in helping mediate their grandchildren’s media use and serve as allies for parents, according to new research from Rutgers University.
The study, published in the Journal of Aging Studies, found that grandparents often monitor children’s screen use by following strategies or instructions provided by other caregivers — most commonly the child’s parents. The researchers coined this process “secondary mediation.”
“Our initial findings offer various compelling insights into this critical process of socializing children to media use,” wrote the study’s authors: Dafna Lemish, Distinguished Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information, and Galit Nimrod and Nelly Elias, both professors at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.
The researchers suggested that mediation theory — which traditionally focuses on parents’ roles — should be expanded to include how grandparents and other caregivers guide children’s interactions with media.
“Moreover, our findings are also highly relevant to the understanding of intergenerational relationships,” the authors wrote.
Their work is part of a larger project exploring how grandparents influence children’s media habits — a topic that, Lemish said, has received far less attention than parental mediation.
“There is a lot of research on how parents mediate the use of their children’s media by applying a variety of strategies, such as restricting the amount of screen time, supervising the content children are engaged with, actively discussing media use, and co-viewing and co-playing with them,” Lemish said. “But little attention has been paid to the role of grandparents who regularly care for their grandchildren. Are grandparents also engaged in mediating media use? Do they follow some rules set by the parents? Do they tend to ‘spoil’ their grandchildren by taking a more lenient approach to their media use? As a grandmother myself, I felt particularly drawn to these questions.”
Lemish said understanding grandparents’ influence is crucial “because there is substantial evidence about the potential impact of media on children.”
Grandparents, she added, can help “minimize the negative potential (violence, alienation, bullying, misinformation, commercial exploitation and gender and racial stereotypes) and maximize the positive potential (enrichment, learning, cognitive-social-emotional development and enjoyment).”
The study found that the degree to which grandmothers follow requests from mothers — or mothers take advice from grandmothers — “depends on a host of characteristics and circumstances and is not a straightforward application of rules transmitted from one caregiver to another.”
According to the research, factors such as the relationship between mother and grandmother, their experience with technology, education level, and time spent caregiving all affect how grandparents approach media guidance.
Researchers also distinguished between noninteractive media use (like watching television, films or YouTube videos) and interactive media use (such as gaming or online activities) and found that grandparents were more likely to mediate noninteractive media exposure.
The study surveyed 267 pairs of grandmothers and mothers of children aged 4 to 8. Grandmothers were interviewed by phone, while mothers completed an online version of the same questionnaire.
Lemish encouraged families to communicate openly about media habits: “I recommend talking with each other about your views on the role of media in your children’s lives and create shared understanding and values about media consumption that takes into consideration the characteristics of the child, the circumstances; and the content of the media,” she said. “Agree on what rules related to media consumption you would like to apply, and also on the circumstances when there could be some deviation from them.”
