Fullscreen : a campaign to empower Smart Digital Parents

Abstract

This report presents Fullscreen, an educational campaign to promote parent-child interaction in the mediation of their child’s digital device usage. The campaign is initiated by four final-year students from the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technology University. Fullscreen targets Singaporean parents with children aged 7-12 years old, to address their lack of confidence and knowledge about adopting parental mediation strategies to mediate their child’s digital device usage. Based on primary and secondary research guided by Primary Socialization Theory, Parental Mediation Theory, and the Theory of Planned Behavior, we developed the big idea of Balance, Communicate, and Role Model. Our message advocated to parents a three-pronged approach of restrictive mediation, active mediation, and co- use. We disseminated our message to our target audience through online and on-ground engagement activities conducted from January through March 2018. Our online video series and social media platforms contained educational information to raise parents’ knowledge and skills. We developed Fullscreen Prompts, a card deck distributed at six roving pop-ups held at community events. Based on the outcome evaluation results, parents exposed to the campaign showed an overall increase in (a) awareness of the three-pronged approach, (b) confidence in mediating their child’s digital device usage, (c) attitudes towards the three-pronged approach, and (d) intentions and behaviors to practice the three-pronged approach, as compared to non- exposed parents. A discussion on the campaign and its sustainability are included thereafter. Original documents and relevant data are included in the appendices as references to the main paper.