Parental Perspectives of Media Use Among Adolescents with An Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Preliminary Study

Background:  Adolescents with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) spend considerable free time in media activities, including watching television, playing video games and surfing websites (Orsmond & Kuo, 2011). Parents play an important role in shaping adolescents’ responses to media. We know little about parents’ perspectives toward their adolescents’ media use, and the strategies they employ to mediate the adolescents’ media use. We use media to refer to television, video games, and the Internet.

Objectives:  This study investigates how parents of adolescents with an ASD supervise their child’s use of media, parents’ concerns about their child’s media use, and their perceptions of the benefits of using media for their child.

Methods:   Seventeen parents of adolescents with an ASD (age 12 to 18; M = 15.6) completed a 24-hour diary to record the adolescents’ use of media, from midnight to 11:30 p.m. for every 30-minute interval, on either a weekday or a weekend day. Parents indicated whether the adolescent was using media and what types of media he/she was using. They also completed a survey, which contained a television and a videogame mediation measure querying about their use of three mediating strategies: restrictive mediation (setting time limits or forbidding certain media content), social mediation (joining children in using media but without commenting on the content), and active mediation (discussing or explaining aspects of content during or after using the medium). Through open-ended questions, parents were asked about their concerns and the benefits of media activities for their child, as well as whether they felt stressed when managing the child’s use of media and the reasons they felt stressed.

Results:  On any given day, the adolescents spent an average of 2.7 hours watching TV, 3.9 hours playing videogames, and 1.4 hours on the Internet. Parents perceived both negative and positive aspects of TV and videogaming but only benefits for Internet use. Concerns related to TV content, quantity of time spent videogaming, and lack of interest in other activities. Benefits included gaining information, learning social skills and humours, and creating opportunities for the adolescents to interact with peers. Half of parents felt stressed managing media use. Their stress primarily came from difficulties getting their child stop playing video games and difficulties having their child engage in activities other than videogaming. Parents used restrictive, social, and active mediating strategies for TV viewing, and were less likely to use social strategies for videogaming. Parents who felt less stressed were less likely to use active mediating strategies for videogame playing than those more stressed.

Conclusions:   Although management of media use can cause stress for parents of adolescents with ASD, parents perceived both negative and positive aspects of their child’s media use. A better understanding of parents’ perspectives and mediating strategies may help parents assess concerns about youth’s frequent media use, decrease their stress, and eventually improve family well-being.