ABSTRACT

There is a broad spectrum of parenting tools available that impact upon parental mediation practices (what parents do in terms of supporting media use) and parenting dimensions (parenting behaviour, thoughts, feelings, and goals). This chapter presents a theoretically informed review of the affordances of exemplar parenting tools. Findings demonstrate that such tools do not offer a homogeneous technological ‘solution’. Instead, five lenses – parental tool functional qualities, parental mediation practices, parenting dimensions, children’s rights, and the notion of the child – reveal a taxonomy for subsequent social sciences analyses and sensitive design.