Digital Literacy to Digital Fluency Among Parents in Mediating Adolescents’ Online Safety

Abstract

Adolescents are known to be more digitally literate and proficient in technology mechanism than their parents. Nevertheless, it is questionable that adolescents can distinguish either its usage holds positive or negative implications towards them. Hence, adolescents  need their parents to supervise and mediate their online activities. This research examined digital literacy knowledge and skills by identifying the differences based on Malaysian parent’s demographic factors. Besides, this research intended to create awareness among parents to be aware of their digital literacy and mediate their adolescents’ safe Internet use. The study involved 384 parents of adolescents aged 13 to 17 from Klang Valley area in Malaysia. It adopted the digital literacy scale and Internet skills scale to measure parents’ digital literacy knowledge and skills using the Internet and devices by employing a quantitative questionnaire method. The researcher then analysed the data through descriptive analysis on parents’ device usage, Internet usage among parents and parental monitoring on adolescents’ Internet use. Furthermore, this research attended an Interdependent t-test and One-way ANOVA to recognise parents’ digital literacy level of differences based on gender, age group, Internet use experiences and professional background. The conclusion reported no significant difference between parents’ digital literacy according to gender. Nonetheless, factors such as age group, Internet use experience and professional background constituted significant differences with parents’ digital literacy. The study found that parents are lack in skills component. Therefore, this study suggested that parents today need to enhance their capability and equip themselves with digital fluency to cope with the mercurial technology context in mediating adolescent online safety.