“You cannot serve two masters at a time”: Digital Gatekeepers in Children’s Digital Lifeworlds

Dimensions of digital mediation and gatekeeping of adolescents’ usage of digital media are crucial aspects of this book. This chapter emphasises the role that decision-makers like parents, guardians, schools, and adults play in how children navigate technology in daily life. Research evidence has shown that “what is often less pronounced in research is knowledge regarding how parental digital mediation is being received by children and youth themselves” (Adorjan et al., Parental Technology Governance: Teenagers’ Understandings and Responses to Parental Digital Mediation. Qualitative Sociology Review, 18(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.18.2.06, 2022, p. 114). This chapter describes, from the children’s perspective, how adult decision-makers play the role of gatekeepers or mediators in two distinct dimensions: those who encourage and support children, and those who discourage children and play the moral panic card. Digital gatekeepers or mediators are operationalised as the human actors who control and/or mediate the children’s access to and use of digital technologies.