Research In Action

For families raising children in an increasingly digital world, keeping young people safe online can feel like a moving target. Parents are often left trying to determine how much oversight is enough, or when monitoring becomes too much. 

New research offers an important perspective: supporting young people online may be less about choosing the “right” parenting tactic and more about how different parenting practices work together. 

I recently collaborated with University of Oregon researchers Yeseul Lee, Xiaoqi Ma and Dr. Jen Doty to examine how combinations of digital parenting practices and parent-child relationships were associated with adolescents’ experiences with cyberbullying. The study included 306 U.S. parent-child pairs with children ages 10 to 14 and identified four approaches to digital parenting: 

Low engagement (10%): Parents reported relatively low levels of involvement across most digital parenting practices. 

Discordant parenting (24%): Parents reported relatively high monitoring and technology-based controls but lower levels of trust and consistent rules. 

Trust-based parenting (32%): Families reported high levels of trust and disclosure, with less reliance on digital monitoring and technology controls. 

High-engagement parenting (34%): Parents combined communication, monitoring, technology controls, trust, safety knowledge, disclosure, and clear expectations. 

What Does This Have to do with Cyberbullying? 

The differences between these groups mattered. Young people in the trust-based and high-engagement groups reported the lowest levels of cyberbullying perpetration. Those in the discordant and low-engagement groups reported higher levels. A similar pattern appeared for cyberbullying victimization, with young people in the discordant group reporting the highest levels and those in the high-engagement group reporting the lowest. 

Importantly, trust-based and high-engagement parents took different approaches to monitoring. Trust-based parents used relatively little monitoring and technology control, while high-engagement parents used substantially more. What both groups shared was a strong relational foundation. 

The takeaway for prevention is important: monitoring may be a useful tool, but monitoring by itself is not the same as engagement. 

Connection May Be as Important as Control 

Parental controls, content restrictions, and monitoring can all play a role in keeping young people safe. In fact, our CHOP and University of Oregon collaborative research team also found that when parents increased restrictions in response to cyberbullying, those restrictions were associated with less cyberbullying later on. The key may be how and when restrictions are used. Restrictions should not necessarily be the response to every online mistake or infraction. If young people come to expect that disclosing a problem will automatically result in losing access to technology, they may become less willing to share what is happening online. Preserving trust and open communication can be especially important when online situations become more serious and young people need adult support. 

When young people encounter harassment, exclusion, rumors, threats, or other harmful behavior online, they need to feel comfortable asking an adult for help. The findings suggest that effective digital parenting may involve combining appropriate boundaries with relationships that encourage young people to talk about what they are experiencing. 

For families, that can mean: 

• Talk about online life regularly, not only when something goes wrong. 
• Establish clear expectations for technology use and online behavior.  
• Build trust so children feel comfortable sharing difficult online experiences. 
• Use monitoring and parental-control tools as part of a broader strategy, rather than the primary solution. 

Moving Beyond “Monitor or Trust” 

For violence prevention, the findings reinforce a broader principle: prevention happens within relationships and environments, not through a single strategy. 

Digital parenting does not have to mean choosing between trusting children and setting boundaries. In this study, lower levels of cyberbullying involvement were associated with parenting approaches that paired guidance with a strong relational foundation. 

Technology will continue to change. The importance of communication, trust, consistent expectations, and supportive relationships is likely to endure.