Through the tablet glass: transcendent parenting in an era of mobile media and cloud computing

Abstract

In many urban societies, mobile media and cloud computing that offer always-on, always-available information and communication services are increasingly pervasive. These services shape the communication practices and media consumption habits of families, influencing how parents guide children’s media use, and how parents and children connect with one another. In this paper, I explain how the growing prevalence of mobile media and cloud computing has different implications at each stage of young people’s development. I then argue that the advent of pervasive, ubiquitous media has engendered the practice of “transcendent parenting” which goes beyond traditional, physical concepts of parenting, to incorporate virtual and online parenting and how these all intersect. In this emergent form of parenting, parents must transcend every media consumption environment that the child may enter, their children’s offline and online social interaction milieu and “timeless time” as experienced in the apparent ceaselessness of parenting duties.