Grandparents can play a critical role in helping mediate their grandchildren’s media use and serve as an ally for their families, according to a Rutgers study. Researchers found that grandparents often monitor media use by using strategies or instructions provided by another caregiver, 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 authors of the study, Dafna Lemish, a 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, Israel.
Based on the study, published in the Journal of Aging Studies, the authors suggested that mediation theory should be modified to include secondary mediation of other caregivers. “Moreover, our findings are also highly relevant to the understanding of intergenerational relationships,” the authors wrote. Their research is part of a larger study that may be the first to offer an in-depth investigation into the involvement of grandparents in mediating children’s media use. To read the full story.