چکیده:
Despite tremendous popularity of video games, there have been concerns about their detrimental effects on children. The game rating systems were developed to assist parents in monitoring their children’s gaming experiences. This paper explores how parents in Iran, as a society without established media rating systems, control their children’s gaming experiences. Mixed methods of semi-structured in-depth interview with 30 parents and survey with 500 parents are applied. Prominent categories of mediation among Iranian parents include: “restrictive mediation” (limiting the amount of time that children spend on playing video games), “instructive mediation” (warning children of negative effects of video games), and “social co-playing” (sitting near children during gaming sessions to check the game content). We also found that parents who are concerned about negative effects of gaming and parents who consider game rating system as essential exert more mediation over children's gaming experiences. Parents with high level of education, mothers, and parents of younger children apply more any of these three types of mediation. Finally, implications for game policy-making and suggestions for future research are provided.
خلاصه ماشینی:
International Journal of Social Sciences (IJSS) Vol. 7, No. 1, 2017 Parental Mediation of Children’s Video Game Experiences: Iranian Parents’ Strategies of Mediation Masoud Kousari1 Department of Communication and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran Meghdad Mehrabi2 Department of Communication and Cultural Studies, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran Received 14 January 2017 Revised 24 February 2017 Accepted 21 March 2017 Despite tremendous popularity of video games, there have been concerns about their detrimental effects on children.
However, little information exists on how parents monitor their children's game playing experiences with the aid of rating systems (Nikken, Jansz, & Schouwstra, 2007).
ir (Corresponding Author) Masoud Kousari; Meghdad Mehrabi This research is an attempt to explore parental mediation strategies for monitoring children's video game playing in Iranian society.
In Iran, parents are not properly informed about age categorization and content descriptors of game rating systems (Kousari, Dowran, & Mehrabi, 2013).
Research Method To identify the various strategies of parental mediation for monitoring children's video game playing, 30 semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 fathers and 15 mothers.
In all, Iranian parents employ four strategies of mediation to monitor their children's experiences of playing video games.
As the results in table 1 illustrate, parents who are more concerned about negative effects of video games employ more the various strategies of mediation to monitor their children's gaming experiences.
Parents need to be properly informed about video game rating systems and appropriate strategies of mediation for monitoring children's gaming experiences.