Balancing digital presents and futures: understanding first-time parents’ practices, plans and perceptions of ‘quality’ and risk in young children's digital engagements

Parents in Australia today have to make decisions about what counts as appropriate digital media use for their young children in a cultural context characterised by conflicting advice, impractical screen use recommendations and risk-focussed media messaging. These conditions make it challenging for parents to purposefully approach and plan not only their children's current digital engagements but also their futures as digital citizens. How parents negotiate these tensions in managing their young children's digital presents, and how they approach planning for their digital futures, remains underexplored. This paper presents the findings of two rounds of qualitative interviews and three focus groups with 23 Australian first-time parents of children from 0 to 4 years old. It outlines parents’ hopes for and understandings of ‘quality’ digital engagements, their fears and frustrations and how parents balance children's emerging capacities, social expectations of screen use restriction, and their own anxieties, in planning for their children's digital futures.