Parents and the media: causes and consequences of parental media socialization

Media literacy is an important part of socialization and with media use becoming ever more essential in modern society, research on parental media socialization is vital. This study proposes the intergenerational transmission of parent’s media competencies, as a specific kind of cultural socialization, to be an influential component of the transmission of social inequality. Beneficial and detrimental long-term effects of parental media examples, guidance activities and media resources in the family home are scrutinized, as well as the social differences herein between families. This study’s first step is to find out the actual extent of social differentiation in parental media socialization depending on the parental social background and family composition. Next, long-term effects of parental media socialization are analyzed on children’s educational success, media tastes and weight status (BMI).
This study holds a life course perspective and investigates parental media socialization from a Dutch and international perspective by employing large-scale cross-sectional datasets. Multivariate and multi-level models are used to analyze differences between families and countries, structural-equation models provide more insight into the processes underlying parental media socialization.