Peer Reviewed

Balancing adolescents’ growing desire for independence with the establishment of effective media-related rules presents a complex challenge for many parents. Our study, utilising a diverse nationwide sample of 1,480 adolescents aged 13-17, investigates how adolescents’ perceptions of rule restrictiveness might explain the relationship between parental rule strategies and adolescents’ overuse of media. Indicators of overuse include dysregulated media engagement, interference of media use with other activities, and media-related physical symptoms. Structural equation modelling reveals that a higher number of rules and more frequent enforcement are associated with increased perceptions of restrictiveness among adolescents. However, adolescents tend to view rules as more reasonable when parents consistently adhere to these rules themselves, particularly in situations with numerous rules and strict enforcement. Notably, a curvilinear relationship emerges between adolescents’ perceptions of rule restrictiveness and media overuse indicators. Adolescents who perceive rules as reasonable, rather than overly restrictive or lenient, report lower levels of media overuse indicators. Our findings highlight the importance of parents establishing media use expectations that are balanced, reasonable, and that they themselves are committed to following.

Children’s video games are controversial for their deeply engrossing nature. We conducted an interview and observational study with 17 eight-to-thirteen-year-olds to examine how they deploy their attention while gaming. In sessions of 60-75 minutes, a research assistant toured either Roblox or Minecraft, following the lead of a child participant. We analyzed a segment of these interviews to understand participants’ patterns of normative dissociation—experiences of complete cognitive absorption that exclude processing of the environment beyond the focus of attention. Our analysis revealed that many of our participants had experiences that fit the model of normative dissociation. Participants reported becoming deeply absorbed in games to the point of losing track of time and not paying attention to their surroundings. Game design influenced children’s patterns of normative dissociation, and in particular, user-paced traveling through the game environment and game-initiated pauses allowed children to more easily attend to stimuli outside the game. We recommend parental controls leverage these points of game play to collaboratively support children’s time management during gameplay.

Israel Aircraft Industries has recently been conducting a novel six-month intensive course to retrain practicing engineers to become software engineers working on embedded computer systems. The first course was concluded in January 1982 and the second course began in November 1982. This paper describes the objectives, educational philosophy, course content, and practical experience of the first course. It also describes how the second course was modified as a result of the lessons learned from the successes and failures of the first course.