"Empowering Parents in the Digital Age"

Abstracts : While economic research documents substantial negative effects of social media on youth outcomes, the role of parents in mediating these effects remains largely unexplored. We propose digital parenting as a new form of human capital investment and test whether interventions can shift parents’ beliefs and practices, as well as children’s outcomes. Drawing on a UK household longitudinal survey, Understanding Society, we first document that intensive social media use is associated with greater behavioural problems among children, and that parenting styles predict children’s digital exposure. We then conduct our own longitudinal survey on 1,800 UK parents, and implement two randomized interventions : (i) an information treatment providing evidence on the risks of social media, and (ii) a four-week video training on digital parenting strategies. The information treatment increased support for school no-phone policies by 47% relative to the control group mean and actual participation in follow-up training by 37%, though it also raised parental anxiety by 20%. The video training generates suggestive evidence of improvements in parenting practices, particularly communication strategies. Effects on children’s outcomes are modest but suggest reductions in screen time. Treatment effects vary substantially by parenting style : permissive parents respond most strongly to both interventions. These findings suggest that while providing information can effectively shift beliefs and, to some extent, practices, it involves welfare trade-offs.